Already drawing comparisons with the Oscar-nominated, Animal Kingdom, Jeanette Nordahl’s directorial debut is exciting both the Glasgow and Berlin festival circuit. Focusing on the experiences of orphaned teen, Ida (Sandra Gulberg Kampp), who is sent to live with her dysfunctional, criminal aunt and cousins, Wildland is a very slow burn that builds towards a shocking conclusion.
The film opens with the upturned car of Ida’s addict mother and her subsequent arrival at the home of her extended family. It’s clear that they don’t really know each other, but her aunt Bodil (played by Borgen’s Sidse Babett Knudsen) instructs her sons to make their cousin feel welcome – just like part of the family.
From the offset, it’s clear that Bodil oversees a range of criminal activities – dodgy nightclubs, loan sharking, drug dealing, to name a few – which her beloved sons operate on her behalf. She’s every bit the glamorous gangland moll, with coiffured hair, silk blouses and jangling gold bangles. Her sons, by contrast, seem more interested in getting high and playing video games in their joggies.
Knudsen is certainly forceful and complex. Her character clearly values family – and her boys – above everything else. But she does seem a little too soft and vulnerable to be a menacing crime lord. She’s clearly sharp and organised but her sons seem oafish and immature. The set up, for me, doesn’t quite work because the family doesn’t really feel like a threat.
Despite having been raised by an addict, Ida is all wide-eyed innocence as to how her extended family makes their money. She can’t quite believe, at first, that they beat people up in order to extract a loan “repayment”. Sandra Gulberg Kampp is rather muted in her role – it’s very hard to gauge how her character is thinking or feeling as she never truly gives much away.
Although Wildland does get off to an exciting start, once Ida has toured all of her family’s “facilities”, it gets a bit repetitive. There are several visits to the nightclub, their “clients” or shots of the family eating breakfast together. It gets a little bit repetitive and, for that reason, the film begins to stall about a third of the way through.
Some of the more interesting sub-plots – such as why Bodil seems to dislike Anna (the excellent Carla Philip Røder) or why David (Elliott Crosset Hove) became an addicted, anxious mess – are never fully explored.
However, a violent struggle between the brothers and one of their “clients” sees the action pick up again, setting off a series of shocking events. The last twenty minutes or so are, without doubt, the most shocking of the entire film. The ending delivers no neat or tidy conclusion, leaving the fate of the family wide open to interpretation.
And it’s because of the gut punch of these last few scenes that you will probably walk away from Wildland feeling shocked and horrified. It’s just a shame that this emotional nuance couldn’t have been built up throughout, as opposed to being crammed into the final third of the movie.
Wildland does have some really good performances in it and there are moments of tension and shock. But it was too much of a slow burn to really draw me into the characters. It feels like it’s only scratched the surface of this family’s story and, in that sense, I am left wanting more.
Wildland is streaming at the Glasgow Film Festival until March 7. Click here to get your tickets.
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