Esprit d'équipe

It's been a long time since we've had a genuinely funny film here in Iceland. Been to dramatic over the last years. This film is first and foremost a feel-good and light affair about a star football player that comes out of the closet and the way he and his family deal with it. It's not the old story of somebody coming out and having huge problems with it, the main character here seems to have no problems with his gay life and it's more his teammates and most notably his teenage son and ex-beauty queen wife that have some unclear issues about him being gay. The film decides to take the humorous road and it's refreshing to see a film about gay themes that does not take itself too seriously. It does have it's dramatic moments, but the drama/comedy is a nice blend and the film makers manage to do this very well. The director has been very popular here in Iceland with his earlier films but has yet to do anything notable outside of Iceland, this seems to be the film that might get him noticed abroad, let's hope so anyway.

The film wastes no time getting to the meat of the story: a successful player in one of Iceland's top soccer teams reveals to the press that he is homosexual. That revelation and how it is done produces the only good laugh. For the remainder of this gay caper, the humor goes flat. (Humor is of course cultural. Maybe in Iceland they find the film funny.) The real underlying comedy is how the main character's homosexuality is the object of virulent reproach while the wife's chronic drunkenness is almost accepted as normal. As can be expected of such light fare, all ends in a positive mood and with a big hurrah for gay pride.

i really enjoyed this film...caught it at the American Scandinavian Foundation last night here in NYC. it was a realistic, emotional, and full of humor. of course, the sexy hunky guys were a plus!! does it really rain so much in iceland? i thought bjorn and lilja were wonderful actors. i was impressed with their work. and the scene where the mother is on the bed crying...HILARIOUS and very realistic. my mother did something similar when i came out at the age of 17. so the dialogue about the dish was perfect. i thought the film did a good job of showing what a teenage son might go through with a parent coming out. i'm just glad no one killed themselves, like in most icelandic films i've seen! instead, this one ends on a really light, positive note. i wonder what the reality of gay live in iceland is...i'll have to research that. thanks, Mr. Douglas, for a very enjoyable film!

I saw this last night at the Fort Lauderdale Intl Film Festival and I was disappointed. While the Cast (especially the lead) is quite stunning to look at, most of the film's only laughs come from the lead's drunken ex-wife. The print of the film we saw was blurry and could not be focused. It was very hard to keep up on reading the subtitles, they were very fast, much faster than normal. The story just didn't go much of anywhere and the ending was quite uneventful. The look of the film is of course very cold and gray, I assume this was filmed during the summer, I can only imagine how gray, cold and isolated it would look in winter. Lots of old lame gay jokes and of course the needless use of drag queens. (why does every gay movie have to have a drag queen lurking about somewhere). Wait for the DVD on this one, but don't expect much.

As 'coming out' movies go this cheap and immensely cheerful Icelandic comedy is as nifty as you could wish. Ottar is his local soccer team's best player when, in the film's opening minutes, he announces to his team mates, his father and his teenage son, not to mention a local journalist there to do a sports story, that he is gay. What follows is a highly entertaining, feel-good movie about being true to yourself and winning, if not all of the people then some of the people, (the right people, presumably), round to your liberal way of thinking.

It doesn't shirk away from more serious issues such as homophobia and the effect of coming out has on your wife and family, but as Ottar finds other players to join him when he is ostracized by his own team and eventually form a 'gay team' of their own, they are not interested in gay agitprop but in simply having a good time. This they manage to do despite the almost perpetual rain that seems to plague Iceland, at least when this film was made. Very enjoyable, then. All that's missing is any trace of football.