“Noi,” an Icelandic import booked exclusively at the Landmark E Street Cinema, alludes to the Christian name of the protagonist, a lean and restless teenager played by Tomas Lemarquis, whose most distinctive feature is a shaved skull. All the better to anticipate the call of the grave in an icebound hometown where he feels buried alive.
Writer-director Dagur Kari emphasizes deadpan absurdist comedy, ranging from the matter-of-fact way Noi’s grandma wakes him for school by firing a shotgun out his bedroom window to the futility of an attempted bank robbery, in which Noi (rhymes with Zoe or Chloe) aims the same weapon at a teller and manager who aren’t impressed in the slightest.
If Mr. Kari weren’t so cool under the collar, his fable might profit from portraying Noi as a belated James Dean wannabe whose supplicating or lawless gestures repeatedly fail to gain social traction in a community that can’t afford grandstanding delinquency.
The setting is far more intriguing than the paltry cast of characters. Really ambitious moviegoing travelers might want to check it out this summer: Bolungarvik, evidently a town of about 1,000 situated at the base of a majestic ice mountain near the Arctic Circle.
The town seems to boast one of certain things: a school, a gas station with diner, a haberdasher, a natural history museum, a tavern, the bank and a taxi service boasting a fleet of one. Noi’s dissolute dad, Kiddi (Throstur Leo Gunnarsson), appears to be the only cabbie. You could envision Bolungarvik as a fascinating new backdrop for “The Petrified Forest.”
Symptoms of cabin fever might loom large in such a setting, and for a while it appears that Mr. Kari might be contriving a comic ode to the eccentricities of an isolated community, hopefully in the spirit of Bill Forsyth’s “Local Hero” or even the vintage sitcom “Northern Exposure.” Unfortunately, “Noi” never gets sociable enough to align itself in a popular or gratifying way. Clearly, it aspires to be sneaky-funny from one episode to the next. Just as clearly, this tendency is too faint to sustain the intended comic human interest.
*
TITLE: “Noi”
RATING: No MPAA rating (Adult subject matter, with occasional profanity, violence and sexual allusions)
CREDITS: Written and directed by Dagur Kari. Cinematography by Rasmus Videbaek. Production design by Jon Steinar Ragnarsson. Music by Slowblow. In Icelandic with English subtitles
RUNNING TIME: 88 minutes
MAXIMUM RATING: FOUR STARS
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