Fridrik Thór Fridriksson Movies

Icelandic stage performer Oskar Jonasson wrote and directed this Icelandic-Danish comedy about flaky middle-aged salesman Finnbogi (Johann Sigurdarson) and his wife Lisa (Olafia Hronn Jonsdottier), who mortgage their home to buy a stale, crumbling bakery. Neither has a crumb of knowledge about cakes, pastries, bread, and baked goods, but they have enough crust to take on the competition. Relishing the thought of profits, they slice the price of hot dog rolls by half. Soon the dough is rolling in. There's yet another finger in the pie after elderly cake-baking Karolina joins the team. However, Karolina's sourdough daughter, owner of a large modern bakery, doesn't cater to her new rivals. If they were leaven town the next day, she'd be happy. Shown at the 1998 Berlin Film Festival. ~ Bhob Stewart, Rovi

The two simple-minded, drunken louts featured in this film are simultaneously bemoaning and celebrating their recent discharge from jobs on a whaling vessel now that the whaling season has ended. They experience significant difficulty adjusting to life on the land, and ultimately drift into a life of crime, with tragic results. ~ Clarke Fountain, Rovi

Sveppi (Steinn Arman Magnusson) has watched his father's nightclub for Reykjavik teens go on a downward spiral due to his dad's perverse insistence on keeping an entertainer on the payroll who is widely disliked. Now he is being given his chance to manage things in a way which he feels is more likely to bring results. The lad also considers himself something of a ladies' man; he has the obnoxious habit of taking Polaroids of his bedmates and tacking them up on a "trophy wall" in his apartment. When a young woman (Ingibjorg Stafansdottir) arrives from the countryside looking for work in the club, Sveppi makes a bet with his best friend (Baltasar Kormakur), who also finds her attractive, that he will win her sexual favors first. If he doesn't, he will give his friend his beloved Chevrolet automobile. Unfortunately for Sveppi, Sol, the girl, is determined to save her virginity for someone less vulgar than him. ~ Clarke Fountain, Rovi

All poor Atsushi Hirata really wants is to leave the cold Japanese winter and take a week's vacation in warm Hawaii. Unfortunately, he ends up forced to honor tradition and travel to even more frigid Iceland to pay tribute to his late parents who died there seven years before. This internationally produced very funny road movie chronicles his many misadventures that begin when he disembarks from his plane in the midst of a blizzard and ends up boarding the wrong bus. The bus takes him to some popular hot springs and he must take a taxi back to Reykjavik. He doesn't make it back, because the driver needed to stop in his hometown and participate in a nativity pageant. This forces poor Hirata to bum a ride on a truck. During the journey, he meets a broad assortment of eccentric and bizarre characters ranging from a woman with a thing about photographing funerals, an aspiring Bonnie and Clyde, and a band of Icelandic cowboys. ~ Sandra Brennan, Rovi

This tale is set in Iceland immediately after WW II when the American forces abandoned the island, leaving behind a considerable number of empty bunkers which were immediately appropriated by hundreds of poverty-stricken Icelanders. The film follows the daily exploits of the Tomasson family, who live in the old army barracks at what was once Camp Thule. Gogo is the daughter of Karolina -- who had a fling 40 years before, got pregnant and was later married to the kindly Tommi Tomasson who took pity on her. Karolina repaid his kindness with four decades of marital misery. Gogo, who raised three children during her first marriage, marries an American G.I. named Charlie Brown and leaves her children and family to start a new life. Most of the subsequent tale centers on Gogo's sons Baddi and Danni. Baddi goes to the U.S. with his mother, while quiet and younger Danni remains in Iceland. Baddi soon returns and proves to be a class-A American-style boor. He creates trouble for Danni, who sadly observes his brother's changes, but says nothing. Baddi makes matters worse when he seduces Hveragerdur, the girl next door whom Danni has secretly loved for ages. Baddi then marries the girl, but it is an unhappy union. After overcoming his grief, Danni becomes a pilot. The story takes a darker turn after Karolina has a disturbing premonition. ~ Sandra Brennan, Rovi

The unusual title of this Icelandic-Danish road movie is the telephone number of pretty 19-year-old Stella (Thora Dungal) who joins alcoholic Robbi (Pall Banine) and Ulfur (Finnur Johannsson) on a Reykjavik apartment break-in. The following day, Ulfur sends the two off on a drug deal, but they decide to flee Ulfur's manipulations by driving across Iceland. Shown at the 1998 Cannes Film Festival. ~ Bhob Stewart, Rovi

Stephen Bradley made his directorial debut with this Irish drama in which circus performer Sweety Barrett (Brendan Gleeson) loses his job swallowing objects and is hired by bootlegger Flick Hennessy (Tony Rohr) to do odd jobs in the port town of Dockery where the slow-witted Sweety meets Anne King (Lynda Steadman) and her six-year-old son Conor (Dylan Murphy). Anne's husband Leo (Andy Serkis) has been framed by deranged police chief Mannix Bone (Liam Cunningham), who often beats up various townsfolk whenever the psychopathic inspiration hits him. Bone has also forced Flick to cut him in on the whisky-running profits. Released from jail, Leo plots revenge, and violence erupts. Shown at the 1998 Toronto Film Festival and the 1998 San Sebastian Film Festival. ~ Bhob Stewart, Rovi

Part of Regina Ziegler's Erotic Tales series, the dialogue-free short film On Top Down Under is directed by Icelandic filmmaker Fridrik Thór Fridriksson. On the literal top of the world, a young woman (Nina Gunnarsdottir) in Iceland thinks about her boyfriend during the cold winter nights while she's left alone with only icicles to keep her company. Meanwhile, a naked man (Hilmir Snær Gudnason) is out the middle of a heat wave in the Australian outback as he carefully loads large blocks of ice. Fridriksson also incorporates a sonnet by John Keats. ~ Andrea LeVasseur, Rovi

Icelandic filmmaker Ragnar Bragason makes his feature debut with this deadpan comic triptych about love, lust, and dead strippers in Reykjavik. Set mostly during a single long winter night, the film follows the exploits of three members of the Bardal family. After Grandfather Karl is sent to the hospital for getting his tongue stuck to a car door handle, he spies and immediately falls for an attractive though snooty former actress. His first encounter with her was more successful than he could have hoped for. Yet when he tries to follow up on the following day, Karl realizes that the woman is half-senile. He re-introduces himself as a stranger and tries to get back to first base. Meanwhile, the 20-ish Julia has a romantic quandary of her own. She has been juggling two different boyfriends until the whole thing comes crashing around her ears when she learns that she's pregnant. Finally, there's Julia's mother who is utterly devoted to a sleazy evangelic minister named Samuel who has the world's worst toupee. His vision of the righteousness is unusual and includes buying expensive cars with church funds and spending long evenings with hookers in his hot tub dressed in a rubber devil costume. This film was screened at the 2001 Toronto Film Festival. ~ Jonathan Crow, Rovi

Reportedly the third in acclaimed director Lars von Trier's "Golden Hearts" trilogy (preceded by Breaking the Waves and The Idiots), this film is a hip reworking of the classic Hollywood Musical, starring international pop diva Bjork. Set somewhere in rural Washington state, Czech immigrant Selma (Bjork) works in a pressing plant, struggling to make ends meet for herself and her 10-year-old son, Gene (Vladica Kostic). Her best friend is coworker and fellow European Kathy (Catherine Deneuve). While outside work, she is maintaining a cautious friendship with local yokel Jeff (Peter Stormare). She also landed a starring role as Maria in an amateur production of The Sound of Music. Selma's life would be one of relative contentment if it were not for the ugly secret she harbors -- she is on the verge of blindness due to a genetic disorder, and her young son will suffer the same fate without an operation. Selma has quietly been stashing away money for the surgery and has already amassed $2,000. When her savings, squirreled away in a can in the kitchen, suddenly disappear, she confronts her cash-strapped landlord Bill (David Morse). Of course, like all musicals, the plot periodically takes a backseat to the seven production numbers, including a show-stopping sequence in Selma's factory. Shot entirely on digital video, the film reportedly used up to 100 cameras for each musical number. Dancer in the Dark received top prizes at the 2000 Cannes Film Festival including Best Actress for Bjork and the coveted Palme d'Or for Best Picture. ~ Jonathan Crow, Rovi

Beauty meets the Beast, and neither is sure just what to make of the other, in a modern-dress comic variation on the ancient folk tale, written and directed by the eternally offbeat Hal Hartley. Beatrice (Sarah Polley) works with the office staff of a sleazy tabloid TV news show, run by a harridan producer (Helen Mirren) eager for something other than the usual spate of violent crimes and natural disasters that are her show's bread and butter. The producer sends her camera crew to Iceland in search of something new and unusual, and they certainly find it when they run across a village that has its own monster (Robert John Burke), a large part-mammal and part-lizard with a short temper and habit of killing people who get on his nerves. The show's camera crew (including Beatrice's boyfriend) doesn't survive their first encounter with the monster, and Beatrice is sent to find out what happened to them. En route to Iceland, Beatrice's plane crashes into the waters off the coast, and while she survives the accident, a group of unsympathetic locals decide (after a few drinks too many) to take her to the monster's lair, where a grim fate doubtless awaits her. Except that the monster is a bit depressed and Beatrice isn't in the mood to take any guff from anyone; after the monster wonders aloud why folks aren't as frightened of him as they once were, he asks Beatrice to help him find Dr. Artaud (Baltasar Kormakur), a mad scientist who might be able to cure him of the curse of eternal life. No Such Thing received its world premiere at the 2001 Cannes Film Festival, where it was screened as part of the Un Certain Regard series. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi

Erotic Tales offers three short films with strong sexual content. Dito Tsintsadze's An Erotic Tale is about a writer attempting to pick up a still-attached woman. Bob Rafelson's Porn.com is about a struggling filmmaker who is hired to make a Nazi-themed pornographic film. Fridrik Thor Fridriksson's dialogue-free On Top Down Under intercuts a woman using an icicle for erotic release while her lover plans an icy death for himself. ~ Perry Seibert, Rovi