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Movie:		7.0
Picture:		6.0
Sound:		6.0
Extras:		1.0
Score:		6.0

Director(s):	Baltasar Kormákur
Writer(s):	Baltasar Kormákur and Olafur Egilsson
Starring:	Hilmir Snær Gu?nason • Laufey Elìasdóttir • Margarét Vilhjálmsdóttir • Ólafìa Hrönn Jónsdóttir
Genre:	Comedy • Drama • Indie • Romance
Website:	http://www.ifcfilms.com/
Release Date:	September 15, 2009

List Price:	DVD - $22.49
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Being recognized internationally as the best in a particular field that your country has to offer is certainly impressive. That said, director Baltasar Kormákur being hailed as the finest filmmaker in all of Iceland still feels a little bit like congratulating the world’s tallest midget. So while this sour Icelandic romantic comedy carries with it the prestige of having served as that country's official entry into the 2009 Academy Awards for Best Foreign Language Feature, it doesn’t necessarily indicate the same level of quality assured were that country say Brazil, or Korea.

Taking on the tiny island community of Flatley off the northern coast, White Night Wedding is a loose riff on Chekov’s Ivanov. With an added dash of quirk, this is a bittersweet dramedy which, as the title might suggest, takes in a chaotic 24 hours leading up to the ceremony during midsummer's night when the Arctic sun never sets. In terms of an American reference, the overall tone of White Night Wedding could most accurately be compared to the films of indie helmer Noah Baumbach, with Kormákur mining great comedy out of such staples as guilt, familial resentment, and spousal insecurity.

The story tells of Jon (Hilmir Snær Guớnason), a dissatisfied middle-aged university professor arriving on this sparsely populated rock in the ocean to get himself hitched to Thora (Laufey Elìasdóttir), one of his students. It’s not a place he is looking forward to revisiting, as cut between the pre-nuptial goings-on is the story of his first marriage to neurotic, unstable artist Anna (Margarét Vilhjálmsdóttir), and the tragic catastrophe that spelled the end of their union right here one year earlier.

Thora is determined to save Jon from his guilt and grief, but Jon is worried that he might be using her (to save himself from his guilt and grief). In fact no one seems to think this wedding is a good idea, least of all his future mother-in-law, Sisi (Ólafìa Hrönn Jónsdóttir) who it turns out Jon owes a great deal of money to having been somehow talked into fronting the money to lease their land for a golf course as part of a hair-brained get-rich-quick scheme to transform Flatley into a sprawling tourist metropolis.

It’s absolute bucolic madness dressed up as melodrama and the kind of farce you might normally expect to be delivered by an amateur dramatics society anywhere in the western world. But what it does have going for it are some veteran Icelandic thespians and a location absolutely teeming with wonderfully unique characters. A wind-swept patch of grass in the middle of the North Atlantic, Flatley is as alien and intriguing a place as Middle Earth. Anchored to civilization by the single visit of the noon ferry each day, Flatley’s people get about on golf carts or via taxi (a tractor with a sign hanging from it that says taxi). It’s the kind of place where the local shop, which is also the local bar, has dried out puffins and jars of homemade rhubarb jam hanging next to the lottery tickets and cigarettes. Flying golf balls are a constant hazard; the sound of terns deafening; and the simple matter of geography means that hopping in a tiny rowboat and rowing out to sea is the method of choice for those looking to perhaps avoid a confrontation.

Despite possessing great humor and some memorably comic characters, the overall effect of the film is one that elicits a massive downer on the part of the viewer and watching it twice in a row would be the pessimist’s equivalent of binge eating. What’ missing from this dysfunctional pie is a little hope to balance the overriding bleakness that dominates its flavor. As it stands, it's tough to see just exactly what Kormákur is driving at. Best as we can make out his point seems to be that true happiness doesn’t really exist and is just a concept someone invented to stop us all from killing ourselves and so we shouldn’t drive ourselves mad by looking for it. Which is exactly the kind of message that’s likely to make a depressed person feel even worse, not better.

DVD Bonus Features

There's but a lone theatrical trailer.