Nói albínói (2003)

Director:

Dagur Kári

Writer:

Dagur Kári (writer)

Release Date:

28 February 2003 (Iceland)

Genre:

Drama

Plot:

A wonderboy and drop-out on an Icelandic village scale, Noi (17), dreams of escaping from his remote fjord with the girl from the filling station...

Plot Keywords:

Fjord | Filling Station | Escape | Mountain | Iceland

Awards:

20 wins & 12 nominations

Cast

Tómas Lemarquis	...	Nói
Þröstur Leó Gunnarsson	...	Kiddi Beikon
Elín Hansdóttir	...	Íris
Anna Friðriksdóttir	...	Lína
Hjalti Rögnvaldsson	...	Óskar
Pétur Einarsson	...	Prestur
Kjartan Bjargmundsson	...	Gylfi
Þorsteinn Gunnarsson	...	Þórarinn Skólastjóri
Guðmundur Ólafsson	...	Alfreð Kennari
Haraldur Jónsson	...	Teitur Sálfræðingur
Gérard Lemarquis	...	Frönskukennari
Greipur Gíslason	...	Dabbi
Páll Loftsson	...	Pabbi Dabba / Bankastjóri
Ásdís Thoroddsen	...	Bankastarfsmaður
Ásmundur Ásmudsson	...	Barþjónn

Also Known As:

Nói (USA) (promotional title)
Noi the Albino (International: English title)

MPAA:

Rated PG-13 for language and brief nudity.

Runtime:

France:82 min | Iceland:93 min | Netherlands:90 min (Rotterdam Film Festival) | Netherlands:95 min | Sweden:89 min | USA:93 min

Country:

Iceland | Germany | UK | Denmark

Language:

Icelandic | French

Color:

Color

Sound Mix:

Dolby Digital

Certification:

Argentina:13 | South Korea:12 | Australia:M | Finland:K-7 | Germany:12 | Hong Kong:IIB | Iceland:L | Singapore:PG | Sweden:7 | Switzerland:14 (canton of Geneva) | Switzerland:14 (canton of Vaud) | Switzerland:14 (canton of Zurich) | Switzerland:14 (canton of the Grisons) | UK:15 | USA:PG-13

Filming Locations:

Bolungarvík, Iceland

Company:

Zik Zak Kvikmyndir

Trivia:

Gérard Lemarquis, who plays the French schoolteacher, is the father of 'Tomas Lemarquis', who plays Noi. Gérard Lemarquis is a French schoolteacher in real life, and the director 'Dagur Kari' was one of his students.

Goofs:

Errors made by characters (possibly deliberate errors by the filmmakers): In the scene where the psychiatrist examines Nói, the former behaves strangely negligent. No health care professional would administrate an intelligence test by giving the subject scarce instructions, since these are part of a standardized protocol. Instead, he would give detailed instructions asking the subject if he has understood them and should be present during, at least, a portion of the test.

Quotes:

Prestur: Now, I don't know where your belief lies... but I recommend that we say the Lord's Prayer together.
Nói: I don't think I know the Lord's Prayer.
Prestur: Do you know another prayer?
Nói: No.

Movie Connections:

Featured in Niceland (Population. 1.000.002) (2004)

An Icelandic Tarkovski ?

Easily the most interesting and beautiful debut film of these last few years, with "Tan de repente" and "Verboden te zuchten" ; explicitly placed under the care of Kierkegaard ("if you hang yourself, you'll regret it, if you don't hang yourself, you'll regret it too"), Nói is as full of humour as it is desperate (with the exception of "love and getting away", Nói doesn't take anything seriously ; he's constantly playing : to avoid being sucked in by that seemingly absurd adult world which takes itself so seriously ; he dreams of escaping to Hawaii, looking at slides with a cheap viewing-box his mother just gave him for his birthday ; in this minimum world, everything is cheap...)… Frightful feelings of isolation and desolation, of being trapped on one hand ; but on the other hand, as absurdly funny (the parish-priest and Nói haggling over the depth of the tomb he has to dig in the cemetery ! and in Danish, Kierkegaard is the word for cemetery...) as it is anguishingly claustrophobic (Nói trapped, this time literally, in his secret cellar after the avalanche -- probably an allegory of his ever-increasing isolation)…

Filmed with Tarkovskian beauty (a permanent blue cast, at once gloomy, serene and unsettling ; blue maybe because it is the exaggeration, the saturation of white, the white of frost, the white of snow), it could be seen as the fateful tale (told more in images than in words) of a village "idiot" (in the Dostoievskian sense), or a "Stalker", as hemmed-in by (rather nice) people as the village is hemmed-in by (desperately beautiful) nature, doomed for absolute aloneness, into which, starting from mere difference and marginality (the "albino" bit), he will gradually "descend" (taking refuge regularly in that cellar being just another allegory of this) ; a journey to the end of the cold… tragic, but perhaps liberating… even if we can't, whatever we do, escape "fate" (the local fortune teller had rightly seen only "death and desolation" in store for Nói)… Starting rather realistically, the film gets more allegorical as it unravels (the avalanche turns out to have killed a mere 10 people : all those Nói had some contact with, and only those) ; in the last but one image, facing us, looking into his viewing-box, Nói looks like a robot, or a spaceman with his helmet on ; as for the very last image (the "real" view of one of the Hawaiian slides he used to look at : a beach of white sand, palm trees, and the gentle waves of a turquoise sea), it will probably be given as many interpretations as there will be viewers ; it proves once more that images, like words, don't have meaning(s) in themselves, but only relatively to the context into which they come inserted : here, the corniest touristic cliché becomes a thing of many meanings, an unfathomable mystery…

Like Aki Kaurismaki's "Match factory girl", in many ways a fairy tale in reverse...