Uiksaringitara: Wrong Husband

Directed by Zacharias Kunuk, Uiksaringitara: Wrong Husband follows two young Inuit lovers as they resort to extreme measures to stay together. Filmmaker Kunuk, armed with his and Carol Kunnuk’s screenplay, delivers a progressively underwhelming (and flat-out interminable) drama that fares best within its opening stretch, as the movie, which has been suffused with a host of eye-rollingly misguided spiritual elements, kicks off with a first act that effectively establishes the protagonists’ low-key, day-to-day routine within their arctic environs – with the decent atmosphere heightened by Jonathan Frantz and Thomas Leblanc-Murray’s impressive and periodically breathtaking visuals. It’s disappointing to note, then, that Uiksaringitara: Wrong Husband segues into a meandering, uninvolving midsection and second half that contains few attributes designed to sustain the viewer’s interest (and a completely absent sense of forward momentum), and while there are a very small handful of compelling digressions (eg a fascinating funeral ritual) sprinkled here and there, the picture, saddled with amateurish performances and a total lack of fleshed-out characters, builds towards a fairly endless third act that couldn’t possibly be less satisfying and ultimately does confirm the film’s place as a mostly misguided piece of work

* out of ****