SEAGULL’S LAUGHTER, THE

English Title: SEAGULL’S LAUGHTER, THE

This year the CIFF hosts two splendid features from Icelandic director ?g?st Gudmundsson, “The Dance” and THE SEAGULL'S LAUGHTER. While vastly different in style and tone, both are bittersweet comedy-dramas concerned with the trials and tribulations of lovers near the Arctic Circle. THE SEAGULL'S LAUGHTER takes place 40 years after the stolid islanders of “The Dance” lost their inhibitions. It's 1953, and Freya, who had gone to America as a US serviceman's war bride, has returned home to dwell in a small house crammed chiefly with female cousins. Like the changelings of Scandinavian lore, however, the new Freya is quite unlike the drab, plump girl who went abroad. She's now a chic widow, still only in her 20s, whose slender figure (which even she can't help admiring at every available mirror) and knockout fashions catch the eyes of various men in town. Not adapting too comfortably to life in Iceland after so long a sojourn in the USA, Freya deflects marriage proposals from numerous applicants whilst witnessing her cousins – abused Disa, simpleminded Ninna, love-struck Dodo – suffer man trouble of their own. Freya's own designs tilt toward her erstwhile boyfriend Teddy, a prosperous engineer and engaged to another. His cool attitude offends Freya's formidable pride. “Freya,” you might recall, is also the name of the Norse goddess of love, and through the eyes of youngest cousin, adolescent Agga, the widow's wrath takes on aspects worthy of Thor's thunder. “There's some temper in the family but this?” marvels the household matriarch, as Freya's antics build to a romantic Ragnarok. (In Icelandic with English subtitles)