Under the Tree

A quiet suburb of Reykjavík. Baldvin and Inga have a big, beautiful tree in their back garden. Their neighbours, Konrad and his younger wife Eybjorg, would like it cut back, because it casts a shadow over their sundeck. A reasonable request, politely made. At the same time, Baldvin and Inga's grown-up son Atli has been thrown out by his wife and is back in his childhood bedroom, fighting for access to his little daughter. Two small domestic problems. Neither stays small.

Hafsteinn Gunnar Sigurðsson builds the film like a slow-burning fuse. It begins as a comedy of suburban manners, the kind where you smile at how petty adults can be: passive-aggressive notes, parking spaces, a missing cat. Then it keeps escalating, one step at a time, each one just believable enough, until you realise you are no longer watching a comedy at all. Edda Björgvinsdóttir is extraordinary as Inga, a woman whose grief over an older loss has curdled into something cold and dangerous. She is funny and frightening in the same scene.

What I loved is how precisely the film understands that these wars are never about the tree. They are about loneliness, resentment and grief that has nowhere to go, and the tree just happens to be in the way. The humour is bone-dry and very Icelandic, and the ending is genuinely shocking. It screened at Toronto and was Iceland's Oscar entry. A pitch-black little masterpiece about neighbours, and one of the most entertaining Nordic films of its decade.