{"id":4040,"date":"2017-07-14T14:49:45","date_gmt":"2017-07-14T12:49:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.queerlion.it\/?p=4040\/"},"modified":"2017-07-19T15:06:25","modified_gmt":"2017-07-19T13:06:25","slug":"sbs-heartstone-queer-teen-love-in-a-lonely-place","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.queerlion.it\/en\/sbs-heartstone-queer-teen-love-in-a-lonely-place\/","title":{"rendered":"Australia, SBS: Heartstone, queer teen love in a lonely place"},"content":{"rendered":"

This achingly beautiful Scandinavian Film Festival highlight explores the boundaries of friendship and the harm wrought by homophobia<\/em><\/p>\n

Our teenage years are troublesome for most of us, but for young boys in particular – often struggling with unrealistic notions of masculinity that conflict with the emotional freedom of childhood – that leap can be traumatic. Once you factor in broaching sexuality in an isolated place with little space for difference, the drama of tumultuous hormones and fledgling independence is exacerbated tenfold.<\/p>\n

Filmmaker Gu\u00f0mundur Arnar Gu\u00f0mundsson experienced some of that turbulence growing up in a small Icelandic town, \u201cliterally as far away from Reykjavik as you can get\u201d. In a country with a high rate of suicide amongst teenage boys, he lost two friends. \u201cI\u2019m still dealing with being emotionally open in my relationship because that was considered weak, to be emotional when I was a kid,\u201d he says. \u201cI\u2019m telling my boy and making sure he knows it\u2019s fine to be emotional. At least I hope I\u2019m doing that. I\u2019m trying.\u201d<\/p>\n

This inner conflict is at the core of Heartstone (Hjartasteinn), a slow-burn, coming-of-age movie set against a dramatic backdrop of coastal Icelandic majesty that has a wild way of making humanity seem very small indeed. Screening in this years\u2019 Scandinavian Film Festival, it stars Baldur Einarsson and Bl\u00e6r Hinriksson as two preteen boys, Thor and Kristj\u00e1n, awaiting the oncoming storm of puberty impatiently.<\/p>\n

While Kristj\u00e1n is adapting faster and acts as something of a bodyguard for the much smaller Thor (no Hemsworth muscles here), their lifelong friendship is drifting into complicated territory, with their first fumbling, explorative steps blurring the lines between boisterous and fooling around. As Thor pursues a sweetheart girl, Kristj\u00e1n pays along, unconvincingly taking an interest in her best friend, but it\u2019s clear who he\u2019d rather be with. These emerging feelings are further complicated by the home truths of his homophobic parents and the surprisingly switched on gaydar of the local bullies.<\/p>\n

Gu\u00f0mundsson, who is straight, drew on a lot of what he witnessed in his own friends circle. \u201cIn Iceland when I was growing up, it was a very homophobic country, openly so, and for me as a teenaged boy it was one of my biggest fears, that I would discover that I would be gay, but at the same time we would be experimenting. We were kind of confused about our sexuality. It\u2019s a normal thing, but it\u2019s a very scary when you\u2019re in a country which doesn\u2019t allow it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Though there has ben a good deal of progress in Iceland, Gu\u00f0mundsson acknowledges of course it\u2019s still an issue, particularly in more remote communities. Whilst the films are quite different in tone, there are shades of similarity with Irish filmmaker John Butler\u2019s Handsome Devil, in its focus on friendship and the oft-rocky road to confidence in personal identity. Gu\u00f0mundsson was, in fact, worried about whether the film would be embraced by the queer community. He breathed a sigh of hearty relief when it won the Queer Lion at last year\u2019s Venice Film Festival<\/strong>, where the judges praised Heartstone for its, \u201cexquisite touch in showing the coming of age of two young friends and analysing the acceptance of homosexual feelings and passions. For the strong and valid representation of the inner conflict that separates and then re-unites the two main characters, set against a natural environment as breathtaking as it can be hard and cruel.\u201d<\/p>\n

SBS<\/a> by Stephen A. Russell<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This achingly beautiful Scandinavian Film Festival highlight explores the boundaries of friendship and the harm wrought by homophobia Our teenage years are troublesome for…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4041,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[421],"tags":[585,481,415,584,586],"class_list":["post-4040","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-press-review","tag-australia","tag-heartstone-en","tag-queer-lion-en","tag-sbs","tag-scandinavian-film-festival","post-item","post-even"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t