Broken Hill Blues (Omheten): Berlin Review

The Bottom Line

This austere teen-centric drama marks out its first-time director Sofia Norlin as a promising voice, but she needs to work on story skills

Berlin Film Festival (Generation 14 Plus)

Sebastian Hiort af Ornas, Lina Leandersson, Alfred Juntti, Par Andersson, Alexandra Dahlstrom

Sofia Norlin

Programmed in both the GoteborgFilm Festival and the Berlinales Generation 14+ line-ups after winning Swedens Guldbagge award for best cinematography, austere teen-centric drama Broken Hill Blues marks out its first-time director Sofia Norlin as a promising voice. That said, Norlin should in future perhaps concentrate on sharpening her screenwriting skills since this look at young people coping with small-town life above the Arctic Circle barely has any plot to speak off. Ultimately, the film is a procession of exquisitely shot lyrical moments that feel like all the bits in between bigger, narrative-propelling scenes that were perversely edited out. Broken Hill Blues is unlikely to crack through the ice into distribution outside Nordic countries, although more festival exposure will surely follow.

If nothing else, Broken Hill Blues will be welcome viewing for all those out there beyond Sweden whove been waiting to see whats happened to Lina Leandersson, who played Eli, the fragile pubescent vampire in Tomas Alfredsons 2008 cult hit Let the Right One In. Now 18 and even more striking looking with her strong features and slight frame, Leandersson here plays Zorin, the daughter of immigrants from an unnamed Balkan country, who loves to swim and take photographs. Such is the nature of Norlins screenplay that we dont get to know much more than that about her, but Leandersson is consistently interesting to watch throughout.

Zorin is one of the happier kids encountered in the film, who are for the most part a pretty depressed lot, stuck as they are in Kiruna, a small settlement in Northern Sweden whose entire economy revolves around the local iron-ore mine. Almost a character in itself within the film, the dragon-like mine growls and makes the ground shake beneath everyones feet. The entire town may have to be moved lock, stock and barrel soon because the friable earth beneath it has become so unstable.

From time to time, the mine swallows sacrifices, like some of the characters fathers, and its hungry maw seemingly yearns to consume Markus (Sebastian Hiort af Ornas), an angry young man whose only two loves in life are the aged Chevvy hes resurrected from near-scrap and his passive girlfriend Helena (Jenny Sandberg), pretty much in that order. Meanwhile, troubled teen Daniel (Alfred Juntti) scowls and pulls up the hood of his sweatshirt a lot, presumably to signify that hes upset by his alcoholic father (Par Andersson) and his inability to commit to the violence demanded by the gang hes joined.

Norlin skirts away from the clich that seems to be coming in the final reel when Daniel trudges up the mountainside with a rifle alone, a move for which many viewers, exhausted by the films pinched air of misery, will feel grateful. Elsewhere, Petrus Sjoviks digital cinematography, carefully juxtaposing intimate close-up details and spectacular landscape vistas in both winter and summer seasons, offers a kind of visual Prozac that helps viewers endure the emotional torpor. Both Erik Guldagers source sound design and the musical undertow provided by Conny Nimmersjo and Anna-Karin Unger enrich the dreamy atmosphere.

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Broken Hill Blues (Omheten): Berlin Review