Les Belles Créatures

What a hidden gem. Such an amazing film. I really enjoyed it . Very nice story , script , acting , directing , the whole 9 yards, the whole shabang . Whatever you are looking for in a film , this film has it. The characters are hundred percent mesmerizing. They are so successful . Looks like the weather sucks in iceland but thats what you get if you live that further up north. One party scene looked like daytime but in fact it was night time party. I am so glad i found this movie on KANOPY , a library streaming service . I read the reviews and decided to give it a shot. Definitely , did not disappoint . If you dont mind the subtitles , you will love this film... enjoy...

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.

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.

Guðmundur Arnar Guðmundsson film from 2022.

Many artists and writers present to us the pain of adolescence, the effects of which they still cannot get rid of in their works. This is one of the most important sources that literature and art have been fed since their existence.

Guðmundsson, born in 1982, I think, has conveyed the pain of adolescence to the audience in a unique and disturbing reality, like a fist in the stomach, as in the films Ártún (2014) / Hjartasteinn (2016).

Guðmundsson's 'storytelling' skill that goes beyond scriptwriting, and the ability to deliver the resulting work to adolescent actors whom no one has given / known before, and always getting good results as a result of this risk, I think, stems from his ability to explain himself to his actors.

Berdreymi, who made its second screening in the world at the Istanbul Film Festival, is once again a Guðmundsson classic and easily stands out from the 2022 films with the closed nature of Iceland and its character reflecting it.

Our character Baldur (Hjartasteinn's young actor's name is a nice detail) was a father figure to all of his friends when he was a wounded child, but he never left his childhood, all the child actors hurt the audience's hearts with their characters, Kristian Eidnes Andersen's great compositions and with camera moves that take the movie to another dimension Thanks to Sturla Brandth Grøvlen, Guðmundsson has outdone herself in her art.

Just as he discovered Baldur Einarsson in the movie Hjartasteinn, he brought Birgir Dagur Bjarkason to the cinema in this movie as well, who will be a great actor with the right direction.

Long story short, Berdreymi is a masterpiece that should be watched not only for those who love northern cinema or 'Coming-Age' movies, but also for anyone who defines himself as a cinephile.

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.