Director: Dagur Kári
MPAA Rating: NR
Dagur Kári’s latest film, Virgin Mountain, presents a light, bittersweet character study about a 43-year-old man and his first foray into love, a frightening endeavor that will ultimately change him forever. This Icelandic drama is sad, funny, at times incredibly awkward, and a highly recommended watch.
Gunnar Jónsson plays Fúsi, an overweight mountain of a man whose life is dictated by shy loneliness and mindless routine. He works as a baggage handler at an airport, where he’s mercilessly bullied, lives with his mother, and is a war game hobbyist.
After his mother’s boyfriend gives him a cowboy hat and line dancing lessons for his birthday, Fúsi humors the man by attending the lessons, but his anxiety gets the best of him before he can introduce himself to the class. As he waits it out in his truck, a young woman, Sjöfn (Ilmur Kristjánsdóttir), who was in the class, asks for a ride home. After hitting it off, Fúsi develops feelings for Sjöfn, and their rollercoaster courtship begins.
It’s established early on that, despite his size, Fúsi is a gentle, kind-hearted man who seems incapable of a malicious thought. He befriends a lonely little girl who lives in his apartment building, and although their friendship appears extremely inappropriate, Fúsi doesn’t see how people could misconstrue what’s happening. All he sees is a sweet girl alone in a new place looking for some company.
Although his co-workers are increasingly violent towards him, he looks at it as teasing and refuses to report them to his superiors. With each meticulously orchestrated sequence, Kári continuously develops this simple, soft-spoken character into a complex man with equally complex feelings.
Jónsson’s performance was outstanding, bringing nuance and a natural expressionism to the role. Though he spoke very little, it was his head movements and expressions that added so much to the character.
One of the more interesting aspects of Virgin Mountain wasn’t the relationship Fúsi was forming with Sjöfn but how – simply by meeting her that one night – his life is changed in such drastic ways. The ways he is knocked out of his routine, causing him to interact more with those around him, seems to give him a newly realized purpose. He works at an airport, watching people depart from their location and travel all over the world, but he never considered traveling out of his comfortable bubble with his mom until Sjöfn lit the spark inside him.
This is a truly heartwarming film, not unlike Mads Matthiesen’s Teddy Bear, that features a protagonist that’s simply impossible not to love. My only gripe is that I wish the behavior of Sjöfn was explained a little bit more intensely, but Virgin Mountain is still absolutely one to check out.
