Woman at War [Kona fer í stríð] **** (2018, Halldóra Geirharðsdóttir, Jóhann Sigurðarson, Juan Camillo Roman Estrada) – Movie Review

Co-writer/ director Benedikt Erlingsson’s Woman at War, Iceland’s submission to the 91st Academy Awards (2018), cheered me up enormously. It is an expertly aimed feel-good movie, delightfully quirky and funny, definitely about something, many things actually, and expertly written, directed and acted.

The main star Halldóra Geirharðsdóttir is great in twin roles as sisters Halla and Asa, one an eco-warrior, the other an apparent hippie flake. The focus is on Halla, who is a community choir director in her forties, but also an environmental activist sabotaging the high voltage power lines with her trusty bow and arrow, at locations near an aluminum industry plant in Iceland, hotly pursued by the police.

She runs into the highland countryside of Iceland, desperately trying to evade the police chopper, in a sequence reminiscent of Hitchcock’s The 39 Steps, as Richard Hannay (Robert Donat) tries to evade the police in Scotland. Halla is just as resourceful and clever as Hannay. Against all odds, we sense that there may be a happy ending in sight. But how could there be? A happy ending would be cheesy, right? Maybe not. Maybe an Icelandic director could pull it off.

The police keep rounding up a random tourist who just happens to be around whenever there is an eco-atrocity, and Halla gets the help of a kindly old sheep farmer, who decides he must be related to her because everyone in Iceland is related to everyone else, just when she needs it.

Now, as if this isn’t enough plot for a 101 minute film, Halla goes back to teaching the choir but receives a letter that her request to adopt a little orphan girl from Ukraine from four years ago, has finally been approved. But she is still sabotaging the power lines and President of the Republic of Iceland (Jón Gnarr) is not amused.

What a a great set-up this is! And what a great film! Geirharðsdóttir is brilliant as the mother of all green goddesses, really making you believe in her and her cause, or causes. She is also good as Asa, differentiating the twin sisters subtly but surely.

The quirky score plays out live on the screen, with an Icelandic band and a Ukraine choir popping up regularly during the movie. Perhaps surprisingly, this is both funny and effective, and, though it is  an idea that is hard to sustain throughout an entire film, Erlingsson does stylishly.

Various roles are played by Icelandic stand-ups and band players. For example, Jón Gnarr is a former member of the comedy duo Tvíhöfði. That all part of the fun, and the films’s wacky sense of humour. It is hard to pull off being crazily funny and earnestly serious at the same time, but Erlingsson does, and in big doses. We don’t need a Jodie Foster remake of this, we’ve got this one.

© Derek Winnert 2019 Movie Review

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