Virgin Mountain

The good-natured Fúsi (Gunnar Jónsson) is a loner by any other name. In his mid-forties, the overweight man still lives with Mutti and his only passions are remote-controlled cars and re-enacting major battles with toy soldiers. Fúsi is not only ridiculed by his colleagues but also regularly teased, which he bounces off with seemingly stoic calm. Only when he makes friends with the new neighbor girl Hera, who finds Fúsi somehow strange, but also extremely nice, and then he can be persuaded by his mother's friend to a dance class, comes some change into his life. Because at the square dance the heavy metal fan meets the adorable Sjöfn (Ilmur Kristjansdóttir), who seems to take a liking to him for some inexplicable reason. But the encounters with Hera and Sjöfn also hold some unpleasant surprises that force Fúsi to finally break out of his comfort zone if he doesn't want to remain the odd loner all his life.

After a hiatus of over five years, director Dagur Kári Pétursson (A Good Heart) returns with Virgin Mountain. Filled with laconic wit and melancholy, this tale of an outsider is one of those films where you're never quite sure whether to laugh or cry right now. With extreme slowness, Fúsi lowers its carefully constructed protective shield and ventures out of the safe rut of normality into a life that doesn't really seem any better. New friendships just don't bring only feelings of happiness, but also hostility, disappointment and humiliating suspicion. For every small feeling of success for which the viewer is happy with the good-natured bear, there is a moment of deep sadness and disillusionment that follows shortly afterwards.

The film derives its tension - if you can even call it that with such slowness - from the question of whether Fúsi will retreat back into his shell, or whether he will emerge stronger from the setbacks. Lead actor Gunnar Jónsson makes Fúsi an extremely lovable oddball who you wish all the luck in the world on. Still, his path to happiness is very unwieldy and too artificial to appeal to a wider audience. If you like small, laconic tragicomedies from the far north, you will definitely enjoy the film. There are many little moments that are simply charming, very original and also moving. But you have to have a soft spot for this kind of storytelling to be swept away by the dreary underlying mood and tedious pacing on the whole.

Whoever succeeds in doing so is guaranteed to quickly take Fúsi to his heart and root for him until the end, whether he remains a mama's boy or finally makes the jump into a life of his own. That's a credit to films like this beyond the mainstream: their outcome is - unlike Hollywood productions - not really predictable. And so in the end: for a small niche audience definitely worth seeing. For all others, however, no more than a charming help to fall asleep

An article by Frankfurt-Tipp