Premiering at Fantasia Festival, Kaspar Kalle’s atmospheric drama, set in a Faroe Islands fishing village 160 years ago, finds two men thrown together — then torn apart — by the sea.
Plus IconDennis Harvey
Film Critic
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Courtesy of SF Studios The yearning separations of seafaring life have generated many a romantic ghost story, and while it largely takes place on terra firma, the Danish “No Rest for the Wicked” provides an honorable addition to that roster. Kaspar Kalle’s assured debut feature, drawn from an 1884 story by German author Karl Heinrich Ulrichs — a very early proponent for gay rights — walks a sometimes murky line between love story and horror. But the more sinister aspects ultimately turn out to be deliberate misdirection in this tale of two men who find each other in the remote Faroe Islands of the mid-19th century. In the end, any uneven qualities in Kaspar Kalle’s handsomely atmospheric sophomore feature dissipate in a melancholy poignancy reminiscent of “Brokeback Mountain” and “All of Us Strangers.”
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