Lamb review: A slow-burn folk mystery centred on motherhood

3.5/5

STORY: A grieving couple in rural Iceland finds happiness in their newly adopted lamb-human child, but things take a bizarre turn soon after.

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REVIEW: After the snowstorm clears, you meet a lonely couple in the Iceland countryside who are living a hauntingly quiet life at their barn, where all you hear is the bleating of the sheep in the shed. Ingvar (Hilmir Snær Guðnason) and his wife María (Noomi Rapace) diligently take care of the farm. You can almost smell the hay and wool in the initial scenes of the movie. Their seemingly peaceful routine life suddenly gets an eerie twist when a new offspring is born in the animal shelter - it has the head of a lamb and the body of a human. Valdimar Jóhannsson’s genre-bending directorial is an astonishing piece of folk mystery that delicately tells the tale of a mother’s agony and her strength.

Somewhere along the narrative you realise that the couple are grieving the loss of their little daughter, Ada, which also explains why María is fiercely protective about her new child, also named Ada. So much so that she manages to drive away the hybrid creature’s biological mother that kept lurking around the house to get her little one back. Every evening, Ada has her meal sitting with her parents and sleeps in a crib next to their bed. Beyond reason, Ingvar too has accepted this as their new-found ‘happiness’. This unsettling utopia breaks when the husband’s dodgy brother Pétur (Björn Hlynur Haraldsson) shows up unannounced at the barn one day. Obviously, he is freaked out looking at this strange human-animal creature that he is now apparently related to. He even tries to get rid of Ada, only to befriend her eventually.

Co-written with lyricist Sigurjón Birgir Sigurðsson, Valdimar very cleverly navigates the psychological landscape of a woman who is alarmingly unfazed and just not willing to give up in life. Noomi’s exceptionally natural portrayal of a mother who refuses to falter even at her weakest moment stands out in the 1-hour-46-minute film. Her intellect and resilience shine through the narrative. Adding more to it is the display of her intuitive power, which is subtly put in the form of her precognitive dream. Hilmir, too, remains true to his character of a supportive husband, who has made his peace with the bizarre dweller in the house - swaddling her and tucking her into bed.

The film transcends boundaries to deliver what can be categorised as an exceptionally well-executed original script. Precision at every turn of the narrative keeps the suspense alive until the end of the movie, when one nightmare unfolds after the other amid the chilly, undulating Icelandic terrains.

VERDICT: Lamb isn’t a horror film. It’s an unadulterated depiction of life’s bitter realities that we are bound to face with dignity. Watch the movie for Noomi’s excellent acting, and, of course, the frames capturing scenic Iceland.

*Reema Gowalla is an independent arts and culture journalist, who mostly writes about theatre and independent cinema, and sometimes also delves into culinary heritage.