LAMB Review
On a beautiful yet isolated farm deep in the heart of Iceland, Maria (Noomi Rapace) and her husband Ingvar (Hilmir Snærr Guðnason) find themselves facing a miracle. Or possibly an affront to Mother Nature herself. The hows and whys of the miracle/abomination child now in their care means little to this couple, who, clearly reeling from some mysterious loss burrowing between them, have come around to the idea of raising a literal lamb child (body of a human child, head of a lamb sort of thing). In an immaculate conception, the couple finds themselves cast in an Icelandic fairy tale, but like one of those super old ones where death and dread were just around the corner.
While A24’s trailer for this film could easily mislead one into thinking LAMB would become a horror film as soon as the lamb child is revealed, director and writer Vladimir Jóhannsson has something slightly more whimsical in mind, believe it or not. Sure, there is a palpable atmosphere of creeping dread established in the silence found in Jóhannsson’s script (who shares co-writing credits with Sjón), the seemingly never-ending mountains and valleys that physically and metaphorically trap our main characters, and of course, the presence of something monstrous creeping just outside the edges of Eli Arenson’s expansive camerawork, but for the most part, LAMB takes on the hats of a family drama imbued with a fairy-tale logic. Immediately, thanks to a mixture of a shared past trauma and the aforementioned fantastical logic, Maria and Ingvar take to the mysterious lamb-child (the desecration of Mother nature be damned!) who they lovingly name Ava.
In a very straight-forward fashion, Jóhannsson finds the humor and pain in this situation, as we see Maria and Ingvar dress up their new “daughter” in a variety of ultra-cute sweaters and windbreakers even as the air of a past tragedy haunts every act of love they instill on their less than natural child. Ms. Rapace and Mr. Guðnason, to their credit, dive into their characters and the world they live in, bringing the couple’s pained past to the surface with loaded glances that do more narrative lifting than the actual sparse dialogue that peppers the film. A whole movie could have been made from just the exploits of this new, unconventional family but Jóhannsson and the world of LAMB bring new obstacles towards this happy family. Whether it be in the form of Ingvar’s brother, Pétur (Björn Hlynur Haraldsson, authentically slinking into his cool, black sheep of a character), who literally stumbles back into the couple’s life in more ways than one, or in the encroaching presence of the mother sheep (a perfectly cast sheep who should honestly get an Oscar nom) who birthed Ava, this happy family is fated to run into tragedy, of course brought on by Maria and Ingvar’s retaliation against the ideas of motherhood and Mother Nature herself.
Sadly, LAMB muddles up this conflict in its middle portion when Pétur rambles into the family’s home, slipping a rather unnecessary subplot involving the emotional triangle forming between the humans into a unique family portrait. The film itself seems to realize this as this plotline is efficiently solved with a simple request and a bus ticket but that still does little to wash out the taste of a narrative thread that ultimately feels excessive. However, once the film settles back into the foreboding and fantastical in its third act, Jóhannsson throws a reveal that falls perfectly in line with LAMB’s navigation of ridiculous situations paired with the constantly increasing air of violence. Even as the final shot falls victim to those sorts of grating “ambiguous endings”, LAMB leaves the viewer realizing that they have in fact come to care for a lamb child caught in a cycle it never asked to be a part of. It’s seriously wrenching stuff.
As a sort of throwback to those old-school fairy tales, LAMB carries on the tradition of establishing fantastical ideas in a brutal world of violent consequences brought on by the act of authentic love. Like Ava, LAMB is a little unnatural and stumbles here and there as it finds itself, but once you open a bit of your heart to the weird thing, it’s hard to easily turn your back on something so unique.
3.5/5
