What the author meant by this rather incoherent romantic drama set in the far north of Norway was hard for me to fathom, but almost nothing in a film made in an American-Norwegian-German co-production made sense. Perhaps the reason is that the director, German David Wnendt and his editor, after rather devastating criticism after the premiere of “The Sunlit Night”, sat down in the editing room again and threw out some 25 minutes and instead of the original 105 minutes it now lasted barely eighty. But even that didn’t help this messy and chaotic film. Moreover, all the time I had the impression that something was missing and obviously some scenes that would be used to contextualize this whole story flew out. The only plus of this film is actually the fine photography and great environment, and the eccentric characters who were supposed to be a strong trump card, this time proved to be a failure and seem to be thrown.
This is especially true of the character of Gillian Anderson or Agent Scully from “The X-Files” whose role was reduced to a minute or two and as she appeared she disappeared. However, the first violin of this film is a young and ambitious New York painter from the Frances (Jenny Slate) art family, who, after breaking up with her boyfriend, learns that her parents are divorcing and her younger sister is getting married, decided to accept the job of assistant eccentric Norwegian painter. an islet on which the sun (at least in that part of the year) never sets.
It seems to me that it was supposed to be another one of those feel-good somewhat escapist films whose plot takes place in some exotic location, but nothing worked there. But in the same place will be found some other rather eccentric and bizarre characters, among them another fugitive, an American from Cincinnati who is now called Haldor and plays a Viking (another typical bizarre role for the underutilized Zach Galifianakis). There will also be a young man named Yasha (Alex Sharp), who came to the island to bury his father, and Frances meets all these people while helping the Norwegian artist to paint the barn yellow and orange.