Young Critics Lab

24 décembre 2024

WHEN THE LIGTH BREAKS - Review by Ailen Pasos

Ljósbrot - Light and rupture, are the elements that Runar Runarsson perfectly captures in his latest feature film, When the Light Breaks. It’s an intricate sensory journey through a long Icelandic summer day that seems never-ending for Una (Elín Hall), the protagonist. In just 80 minutes, Runarsson manages to convey, minute by minute, the intensity of an unparalleled grief: the loss of someone you love.

The film follows a dramatic event in Una’s life, an art student who suddenly has to face the disappearance of Diddi, her schoolmate, bandmate, and the love she kept hidden from everyone’s eyes. The film opens with a vibrant, warm light radiating over the figures of the two lovers on a cliff, as they gaze at the calm sea. The meticulous work of DOP Sophia Olsson brilliantly infuses every scene with the emotion that drives the characters, guiding them through the delicate and tumultuous path they must face. 

Diddi becomes the victim of an accident in Reykjavik, which soon turns into a national event: an explosion erupts in the tunnel he was passing through on his way to the airport to meet his official girlfriend Klara, with the intent to break up with her at least. Una finds herself forced to endure her grief in silence, trapped in a vortex of confusion, like a bomb about to explode. As if that weren't enough, she also has to face Klara’s arrival, sharing in her pain while continuing to conceal the truth.

Runarsson directs with an awareness that avoids melodramatic excess, letting the devastation of a group of teenagers in the face of a cruel fate emerge naturally. A magnificent Elín Hall, in the role of Una, alternates moments of sharp anger and helplessness with others of tenderness and compassion, as she tries to process the event. Amid the general emotional chaos and their struggle to cope, the pain of the two girls finds a point of connection: a profound sense of loneliness that transforms into a gesture of closeness. Holding each other’s hand becomes the only way to face together a future different from the one they had imagined. 

In the epilogue, the sunset envelops the two figures in a warm, embracing light, like a fire that penetrates their bodies and reaches the heart of the viewer. It is a disarming and compact narrative, built on details that delicately reveal the inner world and fragility of human beings in the face of grief. No matter what happens tomorrow: closing that long and intense day together is a profoundly human and necessary solution.

Ailen Pasos