Les Belles Créatures

A captivating, often brutal dip into the lives of four 14-year-old boys in roughly 2000-era Iceland. Addi, the one with a conscience, takes badly bullied Balli into his group of friends after feeling a twinge of compassion at seeing him being mistreated. The acting from the four first-time protagonists is exceptional. Award-worthy. I can easily see them being named joint best actors at festivals (I saw it twice in Berlin).

Áskell Einar Pálmason as Balli delivers an understated masterclass in nervous glances, twitches and despair. It's all the more impressive to see how, as the character eases into life with his first friends, his body language changes, almost imperceptibly.

Birgir Dagur Bjarkason may well take the plaudits with his turn as Addi, he carries the film on his young shoulders and doesn't put a foot wrong, whether joining in the violence or experiencing the dreamlike (often nightmarish) visions that give the film its Icelandic name.

Snorri Rafn Frímannsson has less to do as Siggi than the others but has charisma and backs the others up as his character does on screen.

But for me it is Viktor Benóný Benediktsson, as Konni, who delivers the star turn. A thug known as The Animal, his Konni is able to deliver the aggression needed to make his character believable, punching and swinging wildly through the film in an often terrifying manner. But one by one the layers are stripped away to reveal - not that he would admit it - the scared boy trapped in the young man's body. Such a broad performance would test actors twice his age but he aces it. They all do.

A note on the fight scenes, which through a combination of beautiful camera work and expert, almost balletic choreography come across as some of the most realistic I can remember. This isn't filmic violence, these are kids kicking lumps out of each other. Harsh, cold, real, shocking.

One criticism comes in the pacing at the end and an inclusion of possibly too many story strands that don't really have chance to justify their place in the final film. It feels a bit like a 2h30 film that a producer has demanded becomes 2hrs. If that's the case I hope a director's cut will follow - I would gladly spend all day in the company of the fascinating characters that director Guðmundur Arnar Guðmundsson has so expertly and lovingly brought to the screen.

A heartwarming story of teenage self-destruction and graphic violence. No, really.

I can't stop thinking about this film. On the face of it, it's about four teenage boys from variously broken homes who smoke, fight and swagger around 1990s Reykjavik causing trouble and doing fairly horrendous things.

But they are friends, and that's what this really is. It's a film about friendship, enduring friendship through the extremes. Sticking up for your mates (even when you should know better). Having your mates stick up for you.

These boys only have each other. Balli has no one to start with - bullied at school, ignored at home, he lives a filthy, pathetic life until Addi takes him into the gang (with the animalistic Konni and weirdo Siggi) after taking pity on him.

We follow the boys on a series of misadventures of teenage impetuousness which build - or sink - in horrifying ways towards the film's conclusion. Konni fights. Addi grows. Balli lives. Siggi pulls bogies out of his nose and chases people with them, but that's not the point.

There's a mildly supernatural aspect to it all as Addi experiences premonitions about what may unfold - they may be real but equally may just be him maturing and seeing the consequences (while doing too many mushrooms).

It's rare to see such fully formed, three-dimensional characters, but by the end of the film you know these kids, you're rooting for them (in spite of yourself). You're one of the gang.

Sturla Brandth Grøvlen's camerawork is divine, director Guðmundur Arnar Guðmundsson's story is moving and believable, the performances are perfect (especially Birgir Dagur Bjarkason, Áskell Einar Pálmason, Viktor Benóný Benediktsson and Snorri Rafn Frímannsson as the kids), the soundtrack is addictive. It's the whole package.

(In Game of Thrones, they spent a fortune working on making the dragon fire realistic, on the basis that if you believe the fire, you'll believe the dragon. Fake VFX would have ruined it. Here, it's the fight scenes. Believe the violence and you'll believe the teenagers, and I don't know if there's an Oscar for best fight choreography but Jón Viðar Arnþórsson and Imma Helga Arnþórsdóttir who did these scenes should win it. As the last reviewer said, this really does look like kids beating each other up - and RIP the extra who gets a door smashed full in her face, I assume she just died in real life.)

I can't stop thinking about this film. And I can't recommend it highly enough.

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Rewatch: Such fantastic details that are too easily missed... The boy Konni trips up in the playground at the start is the same boy who hits Balli in the tunnel. It's just cyclic violence passed on and Konni/Addi are never aware they triggered it all. Such attention to detail, it's magnificent, there's not a wasted second in the film.

The young cast was incredible in this. There were a lot of nuance to their acting, and they brought a lot of depth to their characters. This isn't an easy topic to tackle, and to be able to potray something so raw and real at such a young age really shows how talanted the actors are in this. The story is both beautiful and heartbreaking. I understand the ending, but damn, if I didn't wish for it not to end like that. I guess that's where my disappointment comes in. I understand and respect the ending, but it was also predictable and I just wanted more for the characters, but life doesn't always unfold the way we want. I absolutley loved the first half, the second half became a bit to repetitive, and too brutal for my liking which combined with ending made me wishing for more. I don't know, it felt like there was more to the story than where, and how, it ended.

By watching this film, you are transported into the lives of these four boys. I mean, the movie is so involving that you feel like you are part of the gang. The actors, especially Áskell Einar Pálmason, Birgir Dagur Bjarkason and Viktor Benóný Benediktsson are exceptional.

The characters aren't one dimensional simpletons. There's a lot of contradictions, transformation and growth throughout the movie and the express everything to perfection. They let you know what the characters are feeling and thinking even when they don't say anything. Áskell Einar Pálmason probably got the hardest role to play, as Balli, the bullied boy who'd never had a friend before. At the end of the movie, Balli looks like a completely different person. He is transformed by the friendship from the other boys.

Probably different people watching this movie will take away different things. The story approaches multiple themes. For me, the biggest and most moving one is "friendship". The way Addi offers his friendship to Balli and how far the four boys are willing to go to stand up for their friends is really moving. I think I will remember this movie for the rest of my life.

I'm giving 9 stars because of the mystical theme, which I was hoping to understand by the end of the movie, but I couldn't. I will probably watch this movie again. Maybe I'll get it the next time around.

Beautiful Beings is a masterfully told story of the struggles of being a teen in an imperfect world full of imperfect families and imperfect situations. It is a raw and yet at times heart warming look in to the lives of four teen boys navigating a train wreck of circumstances. Its dark plot is skillfully developed with subtle misdirection and haunting foreshadowing. The clever pacing captures the intensity and destructiveness of these damaged lives all while offering reprieves of humor and cathartic tenderness.

At the root of it the story has been told countless times. An outsider is brought into a circle of friends, harsh teen cruelties and outright disdain slowly melt into new dynamics and personal growth. It is The Breakfast Club but with a much more unpretentious group of troubled youth. A sort of Stranger Things but with very non-paranormal dangers. And with the highest praise one could say it is retelling this narrative with the honesty and insight of films like The Perks of Being a Wallflower or the original Let the Right Ones In. This film triumphs in is brutal honesty and is mesmerizing in its depiction of life in a weathered blue-collar Reykjavík suburb. Its characters and dialogue hit masterfully again and again with very uniquely Icelandic circumstances and yet it remains universal in its observation of struggling families.

Part of what I love most about what writer-Director Guðmundur Arnar Guðmundsson has done so well with this film is its wonderful casting. The characters are so awkwardly enjoyable to discover. And very careful consideration to the physical size of the characters helps build the narrative. The smallest are the most vulnerable the largest the most menacing. And the performances he has inspired from everyone, in particularly the young leads, is truly award worthy. These actors deliver strong consistently motivated characters who you quickly fell you have known for a lifetime. Each actor clearly understood the purpose of their character and delivers the needed dynamics with a clarity one would expect from a fly on the wall documentary.

There is one one particularly refreshing aspect of the modern teen depicted in this film that I don't think I have seen done so well before. These teens, with all their troubles (and boy do they have troubles) have grown up in a world that is starting to address toxic masculinity. They really struggle with catching themselves being outright jerks. Being teens that make impulsive choices with little thought of how profoundly their actions could impact those around them or being drawn to responding to insult with escalations of violence. All this is happening while they also trying to influence better of themselves and their piers. And by shining a light on their own actions, by coming to the defense of those who are being shamed for exposing personal vulnerabilities or with unexpected selfless actions they enable changes. Now to be clear these teens are still brutally crude, and groose, quick to anger and cruel but they've grown up at least in a system that has taught them to question this. It's characters in this kind of shifting world that I haven't seen depicted before so thoughtfully.

Beautiful Beings continues the growing trend of more honest and therefore often darker looks into the coming of age narrative. It needs to be said this film depicts and addresses social poverty, teen cruelty, violence, self harm, teen sexuality, mental illness, drug use and even rape with brutal honesty. And it is a more perfect movie having depicted these realities honestly. It is a wonderfully crafted, hauntingly acted modern look at teens struggling in a brutally imperfect world to discover for the first time or retain what makes them Beautiful Beings.