The Seagull's Laughter: Cod piece

The Seagull's Laughter explores love, death and other hobbies of Iceland's divine sisterhood

By Anthony Allison

By a fortuitous fluke of the ineffable, unpredictable indie-flick release schedule, The Seagull's Laughter flies squawkingly into town this week, just in time to provide the ideal, smart antidote to the chill influence of a certain mindlessly icy, big-budget adventure.

Better still, this gentle, enigmatic Icelandic import has absolutely no connection with Bjšrk.

Set in 1953, Agúst Gudmundsson's seriocomic domestic drama, based on a novel by Kristín Marja Baldursdóttir, explores the role of women in a postwar world in which their hard-won independence was being reined in, after men returned from slaughtering each other in Europe and the Pacific, and not only expected their old jobs back but assumed their women would happily revert to blissful domestic servitude.

The plot covers the usual "women's picture" issues (domestic violence, alcohol abuse, infidelity) but adds a nicely exotic, Nordic twist--with steamy passion under the codfish drying racks, violent death amid evocative Icelandic landscapes of volcanic rock, and a general air of quasi-mythic mystery. The plucky heroine, Freya, is named after the goddess of love in Old Norse mythology, and as incarnated in a powerhouse performance by the luminous Margrét Vilhjálmsdóttir, it's never entirely clear whether she is just a woman trying to make her marriage work or the modern manifestation of some figure from venerable Viking legend or, possibly, a bit of both.

We view Freya largely through the eyes of her cousin, Agga (Ugla Egilsdóttir), a nosy 11-year-old who is both awed and unimpressed when Freya, having gone to America as a war bride, returns as a twentysomething widow to live with relatives in a poverty-stricken fishing village outside Reykjavik. With her Rita Hayworth looks and fashionable American clothes, this impossibly glamorous figure wows the local women--no-nonsense Granny Kristbjšrg Kjeld, her daughters, servile Ninna (Gudlaug Olafsdóttir) and pretty Dodo (Edda Eyjólfsdóttir) and pipe-smoking sister-in-law Kidda (Sigurveig Jónsdóttir).

Pretty soon Freya also wows young engineer Bjšrn Theodor (Heino Ferch), but after marrying him finds herself dealing with serious issues, including a faintly comedic spot of trouble involving a bitchy mother-in-law and a flying cat.

When strange things start happening--downtrodden women begin asserting their independence, abusive or philandering husbands get their comeuppance--Agga suspects there's more to Freya than meets the eye. But with the men either absent--Granny's husband Luther (Eyvindur Erlendsson), a trawler captain with socialist tendencies, is mostly away at sea--or ineffectual--indulgent local policeman Magnus (Hilmir Snaer Gudnason), refuses to believe Agga's fanciful stories, she has a hard time getting anything done about it.

"This country swallows you," says Freya, definitively scotching her chances of being hired by the Icelandic tourist board. "It's cold, dark and full of evil. I can't stand it. I can't stand the smell of fish, the rationing coupons, the nose-blowing, the burping, the staring and rudeness, and the screeching of birds."

Gudmundsson deftly evokes the stultifying atmosphere of this distinctly unappealing locale, with economical use of costumes, production design, period vehicles and nostalgia-inducing music (the Crew Cuts croon "Sh-Boom!" and "Life Could Be a Dream,") while slowly letting his tale unfold in all its timelessness and universality. These feisty fishwives might be stuck in a drab 1950s backwater, but they have much in common with every other generation of fiercely strong women, from their ancient Greek counterparts Clytemnestra and Helen to their latter-day descendants Thelma and Louise. Surrounded by weak or violent males, this divine Icelandic sisterhood closes ranks in proud, proto-feminist solidarity against the violence, duplicity and sheer wimpishness of their menfolk.