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A delightful romantic fable,
L'Iceberg begins when Fiona, the manager of a Belgian fast-food restaurant, is trapped in the restaurant's freezer. When she emerges, she discovers her husband and two children never knew she was gone. Now obsessed about cold, she climbs into the back of a refrigerated truck. When, after a few adventures, she ends up in a small French port, Fiona realizes she could actually go to the iceberg she's been dreaming of with the aid of a sailor who can't speak or hear. The whimsical plot is only a small part of this movie's charm.
L'Iceberg is largely a collection of linked physical comedy routines, performed with the physical deftness of Jacques Tati (
Mr. Hulot's Holiday,
Playtime) and the offbeat pacing of Aki Kaurismaki (
The Man Without a Past,
Leningrad Cowboys Go America). The actors who play the leads--Fiona Gordon, Dominique Abel, and Philippe Martz--all come from circus backgrounds, and each brings a unique personality to their particular flavor of understated slapstick (Gordon comes across like the love child of Buster Keaton and Tilda Swinton).
L'Iceberg will appeal to fans of Michel Gondry (
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind,
Be Kind Rewind) for its loopy sweetness and fans of Jim Jarmusch (
Stranger Than Paradise,
Dead Man) for its deadpan cinematic style. A genuinely charming and unique movie; the dvd features some entertaining production notes, but regrettably does not include the award-winning short films Gordon and Abel made previously. Bring on the Criterion edition!
--Bret Fetzer
Product Description
84 minutes, color, French w/English subtitles DVD Bonus Features:
* Filmmakers' Production Notes and Biographies .
Fiona is the manager of a fast-food restaurant. She lives comfortably with her family in the suburbs. In other words, Fiona is happy. Until the day she accidentally gets locked into a walk-in freezer. She escapes the next morning, half frozen and barely alive, only to realize that her husband and two children didn't even notice she was missing. But when Fiona develops an obsession for everything cold and icy - snow, polar bears, refrigerators, icebergs - she drops everything, climbs into a frozen goods delivery truck and leaves home. For a real iceberg.