Feisty teenager Sigga longs to move to
California from her small hometown in Iceland. At least the scenery’s interesting
Here’s yet another quirky indie film with a feisty teenager who longs to get as far away from her birthplace as possible. The setting is a small fishing town in Iceland, however, which lends an interesting international flavour to a movie where, curiously, all the Icelanders speak English to one another. This is because Sigga (Kristín Auður Sophusdóttir), the disaffected protagonist, is about to board a plane to Topanga, California, and so everyone must speak “Californian”. Alas, the script is just as thin as this bizarro excuse.
Accompanied by a group of her best
Friends, one of whom always carries a canoe with him because, again, this is a quirky coming-of-age-film, Sigga’s numerous attempts to leave home are constantly thwarted by chance encounters. She randomly sits in a poetry class whose teacher is played by Judd Nelson, an entertaining nod to 1980s teen comedies, even though he is not given much to do. She also meets Nikki (Tom Maden), an aspiring poet who later proclaims his devotion to her before accidentally
BREAKING Sigga’s leg. These haphazard incidents, however, only fuel Sigga’s desire to take off.