Earth Is a Sinful Song

Set in a remote rural Lapp community, economically deprived, culturally backward and repressed. A spirited young girl is broken by her family and friends as they discourage her relationship with a nomadic herdsman whose loose reputation they despise and envy. For the villagers, escape comes from drink, bouts of joyless sex, or through the hysteria of the occasional church meeting. Mollberg infuses his film with a gloomy sensuality, sodden colours, virtually no music and little relief. In between the feverish action, he groups his characters in painterly tableaux in which they look more than usually stunned. The film works best at placing its figures in landscapes, less so with characterisation and momentum. The melodramatic ending lacks impact for all its cyclical neatness.