Börn started with two men breaking into the house of a gay shop owner to comment on his DVDs (“black and white arty farty shit”) and menace him. The thugs make a small appearance in Foreldrar as well, though this film tries to begin on a more hopeful note: with a close-up of dentist Oskar looking at babies at a hospital. He would like to be a father himself, so far having only played adoptive father to his girlfriend’s children. His dental practice assistant is Katrin (a relationship that emerges too late from the material), and she also has family trouble, having just returned home to her mother and son in Iceland from Sweden where she lived for eight years.

The twitchy Katrin finds it difficult to reconnect with both her mother and her son, who formed a family without her for so long and are wary to change their habits to accommodate her. The third protagonist of Foreldrar’s multiple storylines is stockbroker Einar, who has been living in a hotel room for two months, hoping that his wife will take him back. Like Marino’s story in Börn it is somewhat shortchanged by the space given to the two  other storylines that are more properly interconnected, which is a shame because Einar is certainly interesting enough for a more profound character study.

Using items such as a sperm container and a hair dye carton, the cast of Foreldrar comes up with some wonderful scenes of pitch-black Icelandic humour, of the variety that charmed international audiences in films such as Nói albínói (Noi the Albino). This again makes Foreldrar less bleak than Börn, and perhaps being a parent or prospective parent is inherently a more hopeful position than being a child (one is reminded of Caterina Sforza, who left her children behind as ransom only to taunt her captors later, showing her genitals and yelling: “Give me what I want! I don’t care if you kill them, I can make more!”).

As in its predecessor, acting is strong across the board and the work of cinematographer Bergsteinn Björgúlfsson is again a beautifully dense and saturated black and white that serves the story’s bleak realism well. Director Bragason demonstrates his flair for mise-en-scene with some great finds, including an argument between Oskar and his girlfriend set in a shop window and a wonderful use of space and camera positioning in a scene in which Oskar overhears a revealing conversation of his girlfriend on the phone. Though not on the level of Börn, Foreldrar is certainly an interesting film in its own right and a worthy -- and less depressing -- companion piece.

This film was screened as part of the 2007 International Film Festival Rotterdam. 

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