Lovers of the Arctic Circle

LOVERS OF THE ARCTIC CIRCLE (1998) **1/2

Reviewed 4/8/99

As children, Otto and Ana fall in love. They do so just as Otto's father and Ana's mother also meet and fall in love, then marry. Becoming brother and sister does not inhibit Otto and Ana's love for each other. If anything it enhances it as they sneak into each others' rooms at night. When they grow up, they separate. Otto becomes a pilot like the German aviator he was named after, who was shot down during World War II and was befriended by his grandfather. Ana has an affair with a former school teacher, then moves to Finland.

In tone and motifs, Lovers of the Arctic Circle is very similar to Toto le heros, a Belgian film by Jaco van Dormael. Both involve the death of parents, romantic love between siblings, aviation as metaphor, editing back and forth in time, and the lovers in each film are played by three different actors across the different time periods. Lovers though pales in comparison to Toto. Unlike Dormael, Lovers writer-director Julio Medem simply doesn't invest any real passion in his characters. The story has no central conflict and the characters have no focused goals. Everything happens to them in dieu ex machina fashion. Basically, the film ends up being a clever exercise by Medem to see how many ways he can inject parallel motifs into his story. Ana's father dies; Otto's mother dies. Otto's father leaves Otto's mother for another woman; Ana's mother leaves Otto's father for another man. There are about a dozen of these, and really, such things can only carry a 112-minute movie so far. Furthermore, Medem over-explains his motifs to make sure we don't miss them. Hey, Otto and Ana's names are both palindromes!

The film, shot by Kalo Berridi, does look gorgeous, especially once the setting moves to Finland. If only the passion in the photography had made it into the characters.