Life in a Fishbowl
Reykjavík, just before the great financial crash. Three lives, in three very different corners of the city, slowly drawing closer. A young single mother who works at a kindergarten by day and has found a secret, dangerous way to make ends meet. A former football star who has moved into banking and discovers he is being pulled into deals he does not understand. And an old poet, once celebrated, who has spent twenty years drinking himself into oblivion since a tragedy he has never recovered from. None of them knows the others yet. They will.
Baldvin Z weaves the three stories together with real skill, and the structure never feels like a gimmick. Each thread could carry a film on its own, and the way they finally meet is both surprising and moving. Hera Hilmar is wonderful as the young mother, fragile and fierce at the same time, and Þorsteinn Bachmann gives the poet a ruined dignity that is hard to forget. Reykjavík is shown not as a postcard but as a small, tight place where money, shame and the past are always close.
It is a film about a country losing its head over money, and about people trying to hold on to each other while it happens. Some moments are close to melodrama, but the emotion is earned, and the final act really hits. It was a huge success in Iceland. A gripping, generous drama and one of the best Icelandic films of its decade. A must see.
