Heartstone (2016) Hjartasteinn

×

Heartstone (2016) Hjartasteinn

Close

Guðmundur Arnar Guðmundsson makes a promising debut in this tender, slightly lopsided study of teenage friendship and inchoate sexuality.

The boys’ conflicted, even hostile, relationship to their environment is viscerally symbolized in a startling opening scene, which in which 14-year-old Thor (Baldur Einarsson) and Kristján (Blær Hinriksson), together with a group of pals, savagely cull a school of fish in the local dock, plucking them from the water and bashing their heads on dry land. This kind of hormonally fevered destruction is what passes for fun in their sleepy maritime village, where Thor lives with his single mother (Nína Dögg Filippusdóttir) — who has recently, to her children’s aggrievement, re-entered the dating scene — and two older, somewhat bullying sisters. Kristján, meanwhile, weathers a consistent stream of abuse from his hard-drinking dad (Sveinn Ólafur Gunnarsson).

While the two boys have a supportive social circle (including some girls with whom they make halting attempts at romance), it’s clear that they’re the most important people in each other’s lives. Tall, sturdy Kristján, already accelerating into manhood, acts as something of a protector to the less mature, none-too-aptly named Thor — who, in one of several wry observations on the occasional tedium of adolescence, fashions a merkin from hairbrush debris as he waits for his pubic hair to grow in.

×

Heartstone (2016) Hjartasteinn

Close