Critic Reviews

When the Light Breaks recognizes there is somewhat of a delicate yet feral nature that humans exude while in the throes of anguish. Gone is the poise and self-control we put on with our clothes for the world each day, and out emerge some of the most animalistic qualities we regularly stifle.

An appreciation for grief’s minor moments coupled with a striking visual language elevate this slender drama. Runarsson is attuned to the details of loss and recognizes the narrative power of these instances. He lingers where others might cut, hordes what, at first, seems disposable and homes in on the familiar long enough to render it uncanny.

Newcomer Hall strikes a real presence. She’s posed a lot, it’s true – against the sun, the rust-coloured sheets of Diddi’s bedroom, the doggedly brown bar in which she works – but she’s as bright as the light of summer in Iceland, and her character seems just as likely to survive this problematic present.

Rúnarsson’s film eschews easy melodrama for a more tacit, sensory exploration of the sudden connections that death forges among the living. The future waits in limbo; simply getting through the day is drama enough.

Composed of small gestures and unspoken truths, it’s a bonsai miniature of the vastness of overwhelming grief.

When the Light Breaks is the rare film that might benefit from being a good deal longer. It’s certainly well made and has enough to say to have been assured of this critic’s goodwill for quite some time longer, and might have been able to explore the messy implications of its premise in an even more interesting way.

The two women’s scenes together give the film its most interesting moments.

The writer-director Runar Runarsson makes a virtue out of this narrative simplicity, however, and delivers the equivalent of sweetly moving “slow” cinema, where we get to luxuriate in the characters for long, long, sometimes wordless takes, and to find in the exemplary performance of the relatively new and untested Hall a heartbreaking expression of hidden grief.