White Night Wedding

With White Night Wedding, director and cowriter Baltasar Kormákur attempts to transform an awfully slight storyline into a fully-realized and consistently compelling familial drama – though, as is clear almost immediately, the filmmaker’s use of different timelines leaves the first act a muddled mess of confusion. Kormákur essentially drops the viewer smack-dab into the harried life of Jón (Hilmir Snær Guðnason) – a college professor who’s preparing to marry a much younger woman and must consequently contend with her disapproving parents, an insurmountable debt, and the memories of his traumatic first marriage. Though it eventually becomes clear that Kormákur is exploring both the past and present, White Night Wedding‘s egregiously fractured screenplay does ensure that one is initially forced to struggle with the characters and their relationships with one another (eg why is Jón preparing to marry when he’s clearly already involved with someone else?) And while there inevitably reaches a point at which the film’s myriad of pieces fall firmly into place, it’s almost impossible work up any enthusiasm for the foibles of the various characters thanks to an emphasis on eye-rolling instances of quirkiness and melodrama.

** out of ****