“My Brother” sees the increasingly renowned Swedish screenwriter Karin Arrhenius (“Rebecca Martinsson,”“Blackwater”) adapt the first novel by Karin Smirnoff who shot to fame when she was invited to write a new book in Stieg Larssen’s “Millennium” series. If Lisbeth Salander embodies Nordic Noir in psychological terms, “My Brother’s” Jana Kippo is even noirer.
She returns home to remote Smalånger in rural to save her brother Bror, drinking himself to death after heartbreak in love. Inevitably, Jana gradually confronts her own ghastly past – domestic violence, psychological and sexual abuse, attempted homicide then murder, religious fanaticism, and a community which knew what was going on and just crossed its arms, or made up hearsay – as she takes an interest in what happened to María, the woman she replaces as a home help in Smalånger and the dead wife of John, the silent brooding neighbor she falls in love with.
by Neo2199
1 Comment
Sounds incredibly dark and heavy. Nordic noir always goes to these brutal places. Sometimes I wonder if they’re trying too hard to be edgy or if life up there really is that bleak.