When the Light Breaks
Rúnar Rúnarsson, Iceland, Netherlands, Croatia, France, 2024o
Una, an art student, has secretly begun an intimate affair with a fellow student who is killed in an accident just as he was about to break up with his long-term girlfriend. How should Una deal with her secret in this moment of shock and the onset of mourning among her friends? And how should she deal with her lover's girlfriend, who is about to arrive?
After the father-son study Sparrows and the quirky social panopticon Echo, Icelandic director Rúnar Rúnarsson narrows his focus once again and tells the story of an art student who becomes entangled in an intimate affair with a fellow student. He dies in a tunnel fire just as he is on his way to break up with his girlfriend. How is Una supposed to deal with her secret when news of the accident spreads? How should she behave around her grieving friends, and how should she act toward her lover's unsuspecting girlfriend, who arrives in shock? Rúnarsson explores this dilemma in a tightly packed 75 minutes, focusing on a strong small ensemble, but above all on the face of his young leading actress Elín Hall, which reflects the entire spectrum of emotions from bewilderment, grief, frustration, and anger to flashes of joy when she finds momentary comfort with her father or friends. Above all, however, Rúnarsson manages to keep Una's secret credibly in suspense, which is dramatically more rewarding than any scandal and opens the door to a wonderfully ambivalent ending.
Andreas Furler