When the Light Comes

This is a show about the experiences of a young girl as she embarked on an adventure of spending 4 months of dark winter alone with a trapper.

What I liked about the show is the acute portrayal of the the young girl's (Ellen) relationship for the trapper as her emotions grow from an initial sense of disgust and even contempt at his naivety and gradually matures as she realises and accepts the man behind the bumblingness.

The portrayal of the trapper, Lars, as someone socially inept may not be new, but his lack of survival skills is both endearing and unexpected.

Ellen finally realises that for most of her life, she had been trying to live up to expectations of being special, as she had always been treated so. The problem of success has always been trying to maintain it.

I liked the show so much that I watched it twice, something that I have not done for a long time.

Stijn Coninx doesn't take a lot of time to introduce the main character and the set up for the further story. In stead he rushes of to Spitsbergen to start the adventure, and he has all the right to do so. It's not an adventure in the snow it's the story of two interesting characters that seem to have nothing in common but the place they chose to spend time. The two main roles are played very spontaneous by Krol and Vanthielen, of course there's an accent, a perfect English accent would be unnatural. A good thing Stijn choose Francesca, she plays an adventurous Dutch girl and does so very well

I have read the book twice before I found the movie in my video store. I liked the book better, but I did like the movie very much. What a shame that the actress was a girl from Belgium, because of her accent. I loved the surroundings of the film set and really want to go and visit Spitsbergen myself! It is very beautiful there. The thing that I didn't like, was that it was supposed to be dark, but one good see, that a filter was used to make it dark.

This film touches facets of human nature seldom seen on camera. The photography is top class but the two main actors give an amazing portrayal of their respective cultures until they just become two human beings with very human needs and meld.

Very human; very touching.

When Ellen went to Spitsbergen, she went for adventure. She also expected Lars, her host, to be a rough husky adventurer, but was deceived as Lars turned out to be a silent clumsy tinkerer.

At the beginning this movie didn't seem very special to me. But along the way the psychology of Lars and Ellen was getting more and more interesting.

Then when the end came the movie took my breath away. Probably because this movie happened for real as well as how realistic it was filmed I could completely imagine myself in Lars' place (contrary to 'Hollywood hits' which are often too cinematic for such empathy).

Finally, the movie also shows how it's like to live in Spitsbergen: rough, but not adventurous.