buenneke-942-211299 What starts off as a typical tale about a slacker morphs deliberately into a coming-of-age exploration of sexuality, romantic relationships, and self-discovery—all wrapped up in a dark comedy. 101 Reykjavik starts off quite slow and almost loses the viewer with its melancholy tone and a main character who is close to impossible to identify with, yet redeems itself through an odd, quirky and amusing storyline.Much of the film focuses on 30 year old Hlynur's struggle to deal with adult concepts; moving out of his mother's house, taking care of himself, finding a job, and establishing mature relationships with those around him. Hlynur spends the majority of his time watching porn, getting drunk at the local bar, living off unemployment checks and allowing his mother to feed, clothe and clean up after him. His relationships with women are a disaster and lack any real meaning because he seems unable (or refuses) to connect with anyone outside of sex.His immaturity is especially revealed once his mother's flamenco instructor—Lola moves in. Hlynur falls for her although he is ignorant of the fact that Lola is actually his mother's lesbian lover, something that he soon discovers upon his mother's return home (along with the discovery that Lola is pregnant with his child). Hlynur has no idea how to handle the situation, and he reacts with jealousy and resentment (that seems to have oedipal tendencies), and outbursts of jeering contempt. Eventually he moves out, although surprisingly this seems to do little to change his enduring slacker attitude in the short term.Hlynur's self-conceptualization throughout the film is characterized by his stubborn refusal to lead a life of any real meaning for the majority of the film, and his frustrating but revealing conversation with Lola where she accuses him of being unable to have human relationships and tells him to get a life, and he responds by asking her what life is. Although his process towards self-discovery is painfully slow and loses the viewer at times through frustration with his stubborn reluctance to be a relational human being, over time, his mother's revealing of her relationship with Lola drives Hlynur to do some deep processing and pondering about his relationship with his mother, his romantic relationships (or lack thereof) with other women, the meaning of sexuality, and his place in the world. As he quotes towards the end of the film, "…the lesbian is a relative newcomer to Icelandic nature. She is thought to have migrated from Denmark and Britain. Her only contact with the male bird is during conception. In recent years we have witnessed cases of male birds... who are unable to fly at all. The offspring of a boozer and a lesbian is the Hlynur... an unusually slow developer that can't fly... and remains with his mother for the first 30 years. The Hlynur is defensive by nature, but harmless." By the end of the film, we see Hlynur giving his daughter/step-sister a bath, having a meaningful relationship with a woman, and performing his duties as a traffic cop. It is uplifting and satisfying to find him successful and relational, but it took entirely too long. 101 Reykjavik is a successful film in its distinct characterization of certain elements of the Norwave movement such as the "mama's boy" theme, its portrayal of Nordic culture in the Welfare state, Hlynur's outsider existence, and the emphasis on the contrast between rural and urban culture in Hlynur's feeling of being trapped in a small rural country. However, I found the plot too slow moving and very hard to relate to. I was distracted by my frustration with Hlynur's personality and his inability to connect with people. Although the plot was amusing enough to keep me from entirely giving up on this film, I was unable to identify with any of the characters and so I found myself uninterested and disconnected. The resolution at the end of the movie and Hlynur's ultimate self-discovery took up less than five minutes of the entire film, which seemed like an enormous build-up for very little pay off. Overall, the movie was not horrible, but I probably would not recommend it to a friend.

Tahhh I've heard Iceland called "The Tahiti of the North Atlantic" with reference to a history of sexually loose behavior that goes well back to an era predating the "sexual revolution" in the United States, and I believe Halldor Laxness, Iceland's Nobel Prize-winning author, has a book or two along similar lines, featuring some sexually outrageous situation which is treated rather matter-of-factly, even light-heartedly, by the participants and all around them.The gentle fun in this film is of a piece with its very charming and amusing opening titles: We see, looking up at him, the hero, intent on performing rhythmic intercourse, with his glasses on; the girl whose charms he is enjoying reaches up to remove his glasses, and view her Romeo's eyes unobstructed; and we then see both the lady--and the titles--fading in and out of a serious blur as the hero continues his push-ups without his necessary spectacles.The comedy is about this young man of 30, who is a bit of a ne'er-do-well and good-for-nothing, who lazily collects welfare, lives with his working mother (his drunken bum of a father stumbles into him on the street from time to time), and how very strange developments in his mother's sex life lead to him finally becoming a man, earning a living, and being a "fine upstanding citizen" even as he takes on a semi-incestuous role in his mother's life, a role which would shock and horrify most Western viewers if the story were told a bit differently.It's a pretty, colorful film, very nicely acted, and captures very well the peculiar, quiet atmosphere of Iceland's capital. The film draws me into intimacy with its characters at once, and won me over immediately with its very low-key, simple, and very subtle humor.Icelanders number less than 300,000, and so are required to demonstrate competence in at least four major world languages in order to graduate from high school. Consequently, nearly all Icelanders under a certain age speak English very fluently. Since one of the major characters is a Spanish immigrant, characters all switch to English when they need to speak to her, and so many scenes are entirely in English that I would call the film bilingual.It's a very simple comedy, but although the sexual behavior of its main characters is most certainly racy, and the language very frank, I didn't find the film the least bit vulgar or crude, and, instead, found its humor pleasant, subtle, and engaging.My impression of Icelanders, when I visited there many years ago, was that they could be almost painfully shy people--and in a way, this is a SHY comedy about a very BRAZEN situation.I think it's WELL worth seeing and enjoying, and I would happily sit through it to enjoy it again.

The_Void Iceland isn't exactly known for it's thriving cinema industry and while I hardly consider myself an expert on the films of obscure European countries; I'm not sure that Iceland have had even one major success in film-making. They do, however, have this film; 101 Reykjavik, and it's actually quite good. The first thing you will notice about the film is it's downtrodden, gritty European style; which has already been implemented in a number of smaller European country's films, most notably those of Sweden's Lukas Moodysson, to great effect. As the film predominantly aims for realism, the gritty style bodes well as the story isn't exactly a happy one. It's more weird than anything else, and it follows an under-achieving waste of space called Hlynur. Hlynur is thirty years of age and still lives with his mother, and her friend Lola, who moved in with the two. After a drunken new years eve fling; Lola finds herself pregnant with Hlynur's child, and things get worse still for our protagonist when it turns out that Lola is something more to his mother than just a 'friend'...The character 'Lola' seems to have been christened that way so that the filmmakers could implement a techo-ish rendition of the hit Kinks song 'Lola' into the plot…ah, whatever. The film delights in it's obscure plot line, and most of the humour derives from that. The movie is actually very funny, and many sequences and dialogue exchanges in the film had me in stitches. The human relationship angle of the plot is the main focus of the movie, and the way that the film analyses what happens to it's characters as they are forced into this unusual situation is actually very good. The realistic acting gives the film more credibility for it's plot, and the gritty style gives it almost documentary feel, which puts the audience in the position of the voyeur; which in turn makes the film feel more like a cross section into Icelandic life. Of course, I'm sure that not every house in Iceland is like the one put forward in this movie... Anyway, the film constantly intrigues with it's plot and characters, and although the ending feels somewhat out of place; the rest of the film is good and although this isn't a masterpiece or a must see; it's not bad, and definitely worth watching.

paul2001sw-1 Iceland is a strange country, isolated from the rest of the world and with a strong sense of its traditional identity; but also affluent, liberal and with a reputation for hedonism. '101 Reykjavik', named after a district of its capital city famed for its nightclubs, takes a wry and jaundiced look at that society, viewing it through the perspective of Hlynur, a depressed, childish and insular young man living at home with his mother. Hlynur seems a very Icelandic sort of anti-hero, and the link between the nature of the characters and their place of abode gives this quirky comedy a distinctive and authentic feel, although it seems slightly surprising how much female attention the socially defective Hylnur is able to attract. There are more sophisticated movies out there, but '101 Rekjavik' is always entertaining and certainly worth watching, especially to anyone who's wondered what it really must be like to live in such a peculiar outpost of the western world.