Review: Icelandic coming-of-age drama ‘The Swan’ balances darkness and enchantment

Rural Iceland’s vistas, with their topographical sensuality and breathtaking expanse, seem both magical and unsparing, the perfect fairy tale setting for themes of isolation and enchantment. In the hushed, mysterious “The Swan,” adapted by filmmaker Ása Helga Hjörleifsdóttir, the remote, beautiful countryside is where troubled 9-year-old Sol (Gríma Valsdóttir) is sent by her parents, to work on the farm of a great aunt (Katla Margret Þorgeirsdóttir) and uncle (Ingvar E. Sigurdsson) and hopefully do some growing up.

The animals and nature carry immediate benefits for Sol, who sees herself as the protagonist of an hodgepodge fable about a lost girl in a harsh landscape. But she also senses, if not quite understands, a house of adult tensions, between her simple-living guardians and their rambunctious college-age daughter Asta (Þuríður Blaer Johannsdóttir), and between Asta and brooding summer farmhand Jon (Thor Kristjánsson), whose sensitivity and nighttime scribbling lead Sol to believe she’s found a kindred spirit.

Though occasionally overwrought in its ethereal tangents, “The Swan” has strong things going for it: Valsdóttir’s overall performance and captivating features (with eight variations on intrigued yet suspicious); Hjörleifsdóttir’s nudging of Sol’s maturation through how she frames her against other characters and the surroundings; and an attitude toward the flawed adults around Sol that neither judges nor excuses but preserves a certain darkness. There’s what we tell ourselves, after all, and what the world shows us, and “The Swan” ultimately understands how the reconciling of those two is at the soul of any effective coming-of-age movie.

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‘The Swan’

In Icelandic with English subtitles

Not rated

Running time: 1 hour, 31 minutes

Playing: Starts Aug. 17, Laemmle Royal, West L.A.