SECRETS & LIES // A FILM REVIEW OF "A WHITE, WHITE DAY (Hvítur, hvítur dagur)"
Ingimundur (Ingvar Sigurdsson) lives a slower life. He's a semi-retired Police Officer and the small community in Iceland he lives in seems to always move at a slower pace. He spends most of his time building a new home for his daughter, her husband and his doting granddaughter Salka (Ida Mekkin Hlynsdottir). He drives around a lot, spends quality time with Salka and mostly tries to keep himself busy. The first thing we see in the film is a foggy road and a car steadily heading around each turn, until one turn proves too many and it crashes through the rail, plunging into the rocks below. The driver was Ingimudur's wife, and her memory, and her instant disappearance, is what's haunting him each moment of the day. He's a man deep in mourning without knowing exactly how to go about it.
When he speaks of his wife, and words in the film are used sometimes sparingly (letting images instead tell the story), they are filled with love and regret, achingly hurting and longing for more time. Through his everyday actions and the stunning cinematography by Maria von Hausswolff, we experience the feeling of loss quite jarringly. It's an aching film, filled with words that time now proves is too late to say. However, things begin to change when Ingimundur finds some things his wife left behind and among them is proof that she was having an affair. Once the sad realization sets in, it grips him completely, twisting him in pieces as he obsessively needs to know everything about his wife's secret life.
Writer/Director Hlynur Palmason has crafted a masterful tale of mourning and the obsession in A WHITE, WHITE DAY (Hvítur, hvítur dagur). It slowly and assuredly grips you in nearly every moment of the film. He focuses on moments around Ingimundur as much as he focuses on his main subject; how they affect him and, in the case of his loving granddaughter Salka, how they calm him. He makes you feel that you are indeed an uncredited co-star of the film, one that's unable to chime in on the actions but is forced to simply watch. And the power of Ingvar Sigurdsson's performance is a thing of quiet beauty. His sadness and anger tears apart at you just as it tears apart the character; His quiet, masterful performance is one for the ages. Also magnificent is his young co-star Ida Mekkin Hlynsdottir. Wise beyond her years, and a tendency to swear like a much older person, she is wonderful and the chemistry between the two is what drives the film. A WHITE, WHITE DAY bursts quietly and rhythmically onto the screen, poetic in its approach and aching in its emotion.
MATEO'S GRADE: A
WRITTEN AND DIRECTED BY Hlynur Palmason STARRING Ingvar Sigurdsson, Ida Mekkin Hlynsdottir, Hilmir Snær Gudnason, Sara Dogg Asgeirsdottir. In Icelandic, with subtitles. Now available to stream at Film Movement's Virtual Cinema.