Lamb is a supernatural family drama about a married couple who are farmers in rural Iceland. The film opens on an unseen, heavy breathing creature making its way into the sheep barn then sometime later when Maria(Noomi Rapace) and Ingvar(Hilmir Snær Guðnason) are delivering their herd's lambs the last one is special. They then take it into their home to raise it as their own.
Rapace is always an absolute joy on screen, total confidence, total commitment but here she(and the film as a whole) operates mostly in the silence, in the restrained, and it's a wonderful change of pace for her. Much is quietly implied or inferred but there's very little dialogue in general and much of the emotional exposition has to be gleaned. Guðnason and her have wonderful chemistry and he brings a much needed, but subtle, optimism. Much time is spent on their day-to-day practical life on the farm and it's lived in, effective. As they raise Ada, their marriage gradually mends, and its a wonderful slow healing. Björn Hlynur Haraldsson as Ingvar's brother Pétur enters about half way through the story, and he's decent but his character's inclusion doesn't seem particularly necessary.
Utilizing the beautiful Icelandic landscape the film is beautiful, the score understated and foreboding, and the pacing is near perfect. An almost glacial build that never gets boring, anchored by the slow unfolding of the two lead performances. The one flaw, if it is one, is that the classic-horror resolve is somewhat perfunctory, it's not that it's unearned exactly but feels a bit obvious, a bit counter to the whole tone proceeding it. Perhaps it was a way to sell the film, to classify it for marketing and distribution, but it's clear what the film is really concerned about isn't the origin titular lamb but this couple and their marriage.
A fascinating rural family drama with a health dose of doom.
Currently in theaters, coming soon to VOD.
See It.
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