Myrin (Jar City) - 32th HKIFF

This is a crime film or film noir genre which deals lots of mysteries/issues which did not seem to make too much of a connections until the later part of the film. Your patience will pay off at the end as the mysteries unfold, rather slowly, as the story went by. It was a satisfying experience but one would wonder if it is involved too many sub-plots and too many side characters which makes the film less tight than it should be. A very clever plot nonetheless to link murder with rape and genetic diseases in a 30 years time line. If there is anything more left to explore, it would be the characters, Holberg, who was murdered at the first place. His love to pornography and his ill-lived life can be better link with the disease that he has.

The image of the film was bleak, cold and if not washed out(including those overhead shot of empty highway surrounded by coastline and water). You almost never see a sun shinny day even it was a daytime, which is typical of Scandinavian films, esp. from Iceland. Visual wise, one can draw close similarity on this film with "Insomnia" from Chris Nolan although this is much better and more interesting (with a lot more layers) than Nolan's film.