What’s wonderful about VIRGIN MOUNTAIN is that it looks like it could probably take place anywhere and lose none of the poignancy or humour in the universality of its observations on human nature. Fúsi, the ‘virgin mountain’ of the film, is going to be an outsider wherever he is. He’s a man of few words, awkward in social situations, indulges in solitary all-consuming hobbies, but deep down is kind-hearted and generous if you get to know him. Not that there’s much chance of anyone finding that out, but you fear that should any woman ever get close enough, he’ll probably blow it.

Fúsi is a big guy, he’s in his mid-40s and still lives with his mother awkwardly having to tiptoe around her relationship with her boyfriend. He’s a baggage hauler at the airport, where he is bullied by his colleagues over the fact that he has never been with a woman. Fúsi (Gunnar Jónsson) is rather more interested in spending his spare time building models of tanks in a reconstruction of the battle of El Alamein. He’s initially reluctant to respond to efforts by his mother and her boyfriend to get him to take up line-dancing, but there he meets and strikes up a friendship with Sjöfn (Ilmur Kristjánsdóttir). Is there a spark of interest there or is Fúsi reading too much into it?

… the kind of bald matter-of-fact humour that you’ll see in other Icelandic films …

So far, barring some individual pecularities, this is a common enough situation that could take place anywhere and follow a predictable trajectory. What Dagur Kári brings to the story however is a very characteristic Icelandic approach to the subject. It’s the kind of bald matter-of-fact humour that you’ll see in other Icelandic films (not least in the films of Fridrik Thor Fridriksson, who is inevitably involved here playing a small character role). And the script here is particularly witty and keen in its dry observations as well as the inherent ridiculousness of its situations. What you sometimes find in that distinctly Icelandic sense of humour, and what the director manages to bring out here so well, is that it has a certain edgy quality.

The bullying at work, for example, is pushed just that little bit further than you might be entirely comfortable with. So too is Fúsi’s situation at home with his mother and a particularly disturbing misunderstanding that occurs with the young daughter of Fúsi’s neighbour. You don’t really expect the course of his tenuous fledgling friendship/romance with Sjöfn to run smoothly either, but here there are some other darker complications introduced. Of course, by pushing the challenges that Fúsi faces and by mixing it with some odd humour, it only deepens your sympathies for the big man and shows the true strength of his inner goodness.

We’ve come to expect that from the outsiders in Dagur Kári’s previous Icelandic films Nói Albinói and Dark Horse, and some of those same characteristics and features are familiar here. Like Nói the Albino with his idealised dream of going to Hawaii, Fúsi plans to take Sjöfn to Egypt (the location of El Alamein evidently), but whereas the former seemed like just another way of regarding Nói as a fish-out-of-water, here it feels more like a reflection of Fúsi’s inner warmth. The film also benefits in this respect from the pairing of Gunnar Jónsson’s Fúsi with Ilmur Kristjánsdóttir, recently winning hearts as the resourceful and fearless deputy police detective Hinrika in the Icelandic TV crime series Trapped, both principal actors bringing a measure of inner strength, personality and vulnerability to the film that is universal and recognisable anywhere.

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