Queen of Montreuil (2013)
Directed by Sólveig Anspach

Film Review

In 1999, Icelandic film director Sólveig Anspach made an instant splash with her debut feature Haut les coeurs (1999), a film that brought a refreshing lightness of touch to the sensitive subject of living with a life-threatening cancer.  In Queen of Montreuil, Anspach brings a similarly unconventional slant to another difficult theme, namely that of coping with the ordeal of a close personal bereavement.  By the nature of its subject, you might expect this to be a grim, maudlin affair, but it proves to be quite the opposite.  Instead of dwelling on the finality of death, Anspach's warm and witty film is a celebration of life and the continuation of life, poignantly authentic and startlingly original - by far the director's best work to date.  And it's not only about bereavement.  It's also about friendship, finding solidarity in the most unexpected places, and learning from the culture and experiences of others.

Queen of Montreuil is a sequel of sorts to Anspach's previous film, Back Soon (2007), with the remarkable Didda Jonsdottir and indescribably cute Úlfur Ægisson reprising their roles as an oddball Icelandic mother and son.  Here, Jonsdottir and Ægisson find themselves stranded in France after the collapse of the Icelandic economy and are taken in, like two stray cats, by grieving widow Florence Loiret-Caille, who is preoccupied with the conundrum of what to do with her husband's cremated remains.  Loiret-Caille's distrait melancholia contrasts with the dotty joie de vivre of Jonsdottir (who is soon clambering her way up a 100 foot high tower crane) and infantile bonhomie of her son (who takes it on himself to adopt (a) a chronically depressed sea lion and (b) a chronically out-of-place Omar Sharif moustache - it's hard to know know which is weirder).  It is the unlikely friendship that develops between Loiret-Caille and her hippy houseguests that helps her to overcome her bereavement and find a renewed zest for living, after a few culture-clash mishaps along the way.

The plot sounds a little corny but Anspach's likeably warped approach, helped by some astonishingly true-to-life performances from the three principals, results in a film that is totally irresistible.   Amid some fanciful excursions towards the deliriously wacky there is a thoughtful reflection on what it means to lose a loved one and how essential the company of others is in overcoming this most painful of episodes in one's life.  This is brought home in one somewhat incongruous but incredibly powerful scene in which Sophie Quinton turns up à l'improviste to receive the news that the man of her dreams, whom she loved passionately and intends to spend the rest of her life with, is now reduced to a small pile of ash in a household ornament.  This scene is tartly counterpointed by a tragicomic scene that comes not long afterwards, in which the troublesome sea lion (a blatant metaphor for Loiret-Caille's unshiftable grief) and aforementioned ashes fulfil on old Icelandic custom, in a way that would hardly be out of place in an episode of Monty Python's Flying Circus.  Some colour saturated animated inserts add to the film's offbeat poetry, but the image that is most likely to stay with you is the look of child-like exultation on Didda Jonsdottir's face as she takes control of a crane towering over Montreuil and becomes the mistress of all she surveys. It's pure magic - and so is the film.

Film Synopsis

Agathe, a woman in her thirties, returns to France with the ashes of her husband, recently deceased in a road accident.  As she passes through customs at the airport in Paris she makes the acquaintance of an older Icelandic woman, Anna, and her 25-year-old son Úlfur.  Stranded in France because their airline has gone bust, Anna and Úlfur talk Agathe into accommodating them at her home in Montreuil.  Still in mourning for her husband, Agathe is unable to resume her career as a filmmaker and spends her time contemplating what to do with her partner's ashes.  Meanwhile, Anna strikes up a friendship with a crane operator whilst Úlfur becomes concerned for the fate of a sea lion that has been left behind at a closed down zoo.  Agathe is far from pleased when, one day, she returns home to find a fully grown aquatic mammal in her bathroom...