“In a few of its more magical moments the film soars and rises above the average.”
When Diddi dies in a horrific tunnel accident that shocks the nation, his group of friends is understandably devastated. One of them is his new girlfriend Una, though nobody but their mutual pal Gunni knows about the romantic connection between her and Diddi. The latter was on his way to his long-distance girlfriend Klara to tell her that their relationship was over. His death has now saddled Una with a secret that forces her to wrestle with the depth of her grief for somebody who was to the outside world just a classmate at art school and whose band she played in. When Klara arrives in Reykjavik for the memorial service, Una has to keep up a façade so as to not further shatter Klara’s world. But what about her world, and what about her grief?
A rather dour opening to this year’s Un Certain Regard, Icelandic director Rúnar Rúnarsson’s fourth feature When the Light Breaks is an intimate and short film about dealing with loss. Pared down to a minimum and with a cold aesthetic that pairs nicely with its protagonist’s plight to keep her secrets and more or less grieve in silence, the film even at its short 75-minute runtime feels a little over-stretched; it has enough saving graces to overcome the minimalism of a narrative which maybe would have worked better at mid-length.
Top of the list is lead actress Elín Hall’s perfectly modulated performance. Carrying virtually every scene in the film, Hall embodies Una with an introverted slant. Having a strained relationship with her parents, Una finally feels dawn breaking for her in the form of her relationship with Diddi, but that brief period of joy is brutally cut short and now she has to navigate an emotional minefield. Hall convinces, from her restrained tears to a cathartic moment at an ‘afterparty’ of sorts following the memorial service.
Rúnarsson shows the same restraint in putting the brittle story, which he himself penned, to the screen. Employing some of Reykjavik’s most striking modern architecture, When the Light Breaks‘ simple and sober compositions, combined with a colour scheme that favours greys and cool tones, hold back the melodrama as much as Una has to hold back why she is really grieving. Rúnarsson allows himself the occasional directorial flourish (a superimposition of Una and Klara through reflections is the film’s most memorable shot), but otherwise the work is low-key yet apt for the story. His use of Jóhann Jóhannsson’s haunting Odi et Amo at key moments in the film punctuates Una’s mood; the title, translating to “I hate you and I love you“, is a subtle reference to Una’s bond with Klara that strengthens over the course of their day together. In the final scenes Rúnarsson then nicely brings the narrative full circle from dusk till dawn, and as the light finally breaks over the ocean, so does it break symbolically for Una. A bit on the nose perhaps, but with Jóhannsson’s music underneath it becomes a beautiful moment of reflection.
While grief as a theme is not exactly groundbreaking, Rúnarsson has added the element of secrecy to it, which gives When the Light Breaks just that little bit extra. Despite superfluous scenes and unnecessary dialogue which seem present only to pad the runtime, in a few of its more magical moments the film soars and rises above the average film tackling the subject. Hall’s naturalism and the film’s accessible premise could see When the Light Breaks have a good run on the festival circuit, and while its quality doesn’t match that of his 2015 San Sebastian winner Sparrows, Rúnarsson remains a director whose work will always find an audience.
(c) Image copyright: Compass Film