Gemsar

I don't know what the idea was making this film. Was it supposed to be "a shocker" as the tag line implies ("Everything you did not know about teenagers and did not want to know!"). Was it supposed to be a realistic slice of life type of film, without a particular emphasis on any one character or theme? What was this film about, if anything? Pointless, direction-less, unfocused film that had very little to say and seems to have had the sole aim of shocking people by showing them horror stories from the real world of teenagedom (a well Larry Clark has already sucked dry).

And what do we get. Teen drinking, date rape, a little driver's ed fondling, and I think I remember seeing a reefer in there somewhere....zounds! Even the most complacent suburban housewife, upon seeing this, would reply, "seen that, done that".

What Mikael Torfason got from making Gemsar was good preparation for his future job as an editor of the tabloid "DV". What the rest of us got from seeing it was 80 minutes of waste.

Someone needs to give Icelandic teenagers the film they deserve.