Film

Dark Horse (2005)

Director: Dagur Kári

Movie review

From Time Out London

Icelander Dagur Kári wowed many critics a couple of years back with his suitably undemonstrative embrace of the slacker gestalt in his Reykjavik-set  debut feature, ‘Nói Albinói’. He’s carted his camera and his laidback observational skills to the quiet streets of Copenhagen for his latest feature, another gently absurdist, wryly comedic look at a demotivated outsider, this time older, twentysomething graffiti-artist, Daniel (a winningly contained Jakob Cedergren), who’s mates with a disappointingly regulation-issue eccentric, the portly ‘grandpa’ (Nicolas Bro). There’s perhaps an overfamiliarity and self-consciousness to Kári’s meandering, quietly melancholy observations and a gentle whiff, too, of pretension about the mock-formal chapter headings and deliberately desaturated black-and-white cinematography. But things become more intriguing with an affecting injection of a Wender-esque existentialism as Daniel is forced to react to the demands of a new girlfriend, vulnerable shop assistant Franc (Tilly Scott Pedersen). A little slight and self-conscious, maybe, but nicely understated and seductively sympathetic.

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