It’s a Nordic heat wave

The most memorable moments of “Noi the Albino,” the gently comedic debut of Icelandic filmmaker Dagur Kari, pit man against spectacular, icy nature.

Clusters of prefab homes huddle awkwardly against vast expanses of white. A boy makes a dash through snow, his silhouette a swift, colorful fleck traveling under gray skies like the shadow of a dream.

“Noi,” which tells the story of a teenage protagonist coming of age in a far-off Icelandic fjord, lands in theaters April 9. It is not the only current picture that employs an amusingly deadpan style to establish a mellow Nordic mood.

Last month’s “Kitchen Stories,” the second feature from Norwegian director Bent Hamer, grafts a droll bachelors’ tale onto a similar backdrop of solitude, silence and snow. The elemental presence of the latter -- more abundant, various and velvety on screen than one could ever imagine -- provides an extra physical dimension to filmmaking and imparts a distinct sense of quiet and observant contemplation to the narrative.

In fact, both “Noi” and “Kitchen Stories” seem concocted from distinct yet similar recipes that pair the icy cool of a Popsicle with the sweetness of a dream-pop song. Could it be that this characteristically Northern aesthetic is the latest cinematic contribution from Scandinavia’s new crop of filmmakers?

“I’m not consciously trying to be Scandinavian,” says 30-year-old Kari, who wrote and directed “Noi” after collecting ideas for it over a decade. He found inspiration came from American folk-punk musician Jonathan Richman and midcentury American author Richard Brodigan as much as the dramatic scenery of his native land.

Then again, Kari also believes the appeal of his yarn is more universal than local: “My experience has been that people from everywhere can relate to the story, because every country has a small town and a teenager who wants to break away. I was trying to create a universe that fit this film, so I borrowed the surroundings and constructed a new reality. It’s a bit like Springfield from ‘The Simpsons -- one policeman, one school, one taxi, one bar.”

Indeed, one review of the film did describe his bald, smart-alecky protagonist as “Bart Simpson sprung to life.” On screen, this goofball hero sports a wool cap pulled tightly over unnervingly fair eyebrows and spends his days ditching school to target-shoot gigantic icicles for kicks and drafting escape plans.

If “Noi” channels “The Simpsons” through the prism of a Nordic fairy tale, “Kitchen Stories” taps into similar satirical archetypes from an IKEA angle.

Using minimal dialogue and long, observant takes, the film details the travails of a pack of bureaucrats on the payroll of the ‘50s-era Swedish Home Research Institute who are on a scientific mission to map out the housework habits of bachelors from neighboring Norway’s countryside.

A no-interaction covenant between each researcher and his grouchy research subject is initially strictly enforced, yet it gradually dissolves as observer and observed find themselves unwittingly bonding over such quintessentially Scandinavian tokens as fermented herring snacks and neat sips of vodka.

Alongside the filmmakers’ personal imprint, the projects share a Scandi sensibility that can be distinguished even by those averse to thematic generalizations. “There are some general qualities that we share in Scandinavia, especially a kind of understated, dry sense of humor,” says “Stories” director Hamer. “But first of all, there are individuals that are making films.”

A rising cinematic force

With the slew of fresh offerings from Nordic countries finding their way into L.A. theaters, the spring promises to indeed be a Scandinavian season -- one that is rich in cinematic moods, styles and textures.

The tide of Scandi imports has been gathering momentum since the mid-’90s, when Denmark’s back-to-basics film collective Dogme 95 reset the dial to the purity and exuberance of New Wave, transforming what was one of the most hopeless filmmaking nations into a European trendsetter.

That cinema of brazen ideas is still flourishing, most notably visible in the current projects of two Danish filmmakers. First-time director Christoffer Boe is set to soon launch “Reconstruction,” his earnest, questioning look at cinema and its motives, while Lars von Trier -- founding father of Dogme 95 and a notoriously brilliant provocateur -- opens his latest intellectual tease, the misanthropic fable “Dogville,” on March 26 in L.A. Two other Dogme alumni are resurfacing in March as well. The love story “Wilbur Wants to Kill Himself” is Lone Scherfig’s follow-up to her 2002 romantic comedy “Italian for Beginners,” and the creepy fairy tale “Green Butchers” is the directing debut of hitherto celebrated screenwriter Anders Thomas Jensen.

Finally, Mikael Hafstrom’s “Evil,” an underdog tale that was a hit in the director’s native Sweden, competed for an Oscar in the foreign film category this year, though it has yet to find a U.S. distributor. The nomination fits nicely with the recognition, if not commercial success, Nordic film has been racking up steadily in recent memory. Finland’s “Man Without a Past” was an Oscar contender in that same category last year, as was Norway’s “Elling” in 2002, and Sweden’s “Under the Sun” in 2000.

Last year the buzz at the Cannes Film Festival was that the American indie scene had become predictable and it is in European film where exciting things are happening.

This year, it looks as if Scandinavian cinema is establishing itself as one of the main areas of creative ferment. Most often working with total control and endowed with freedom from commercial restraints, the filmmakers are able to pursue as personal a vision as they see fit.

“It’s always a big risk to make a different kind of film, but like in life, you have to take chances,” Hamer says. His “Stories” stands out because it unfolds at a particularly deliberate pace -- suited for the director’s acknowledged goal, “to show that life can still be full of humor and integrity even on a very small level.”

The situations highlighted by the plot occur indeed on the most minute level of mundane existence -- Will the host notice that his unwelcome visitor used, and then misplaced, his salt shaker? -- but they add up to a narrative that is surprisingly funny and suspenseful.

“It was really challenging to make a film with just two men in the kitchen, and them not talking too much,” Hamer says. “But somehow it works. When [my] character moves the salt shaker, it’s like the biggest explosion in an American action film.”

A similar kind of quietly impactive explosion came last spring from Sweden’s Lukas Moodysson. His “Lilya 4-ever” was a devastatingly poetic tale of a young orphan who trades poverty in her ex-Soviet Union hometown for sexual bondage in prosperous and highly civilized Sweden. The picture landed on many critics’ “best of” lists last year, putting the 35-year-old Moodysson on the map as certainly one of the most interesting filmmakers working in Scandinavia today.

Yet he bristles when asked whether his directorial imprint -- a socially engaged and deeply humanistic approach, an affection for surrealism spiked with deadpan humorous touches, an aspiration for art that is primarily contemplative and not so much driven by storytelling -- reflects a particularly Scandinavian sensibility.

“I have no idea what that means -- it sounds like a journalist’s invention,” Moodysson comments by e-mail from Malmo, where he lives and works on projects that he funds through his own production company, Memfis Film. “I often feel quite unconscious,” he says. “I think that’s a prerequisite for being able to tell something that is important: that you are in a kind of sleep. There, in that sleep, stories come to me. On the other hand it’s very important to be socially present, to be where one is, and I always try to be that. I feel like a filter. The world is passing through me.”

“Making the kinds of films we make is not a matter of national identity,” Hamer says, adding that what today’s best Scandinavian filmmakers seem to share above all is sticking to a fiercely independent position, which they are able to achieve with help from government filmmaking grants and subsidies.

Strength in numbers

While Sweden has long been the best-known filmmaking nation in the area and Denmark has caught up in prestige since the mid-’90s, Norway, Iceland and Finland remain relative virgin territories for U.S. audiences, though they each produce a handful of good films every year. In the last decade, Sweden has produced on average about 30 films a year; Denmark, 19; Iceland, 5; and Finland, 8.

Says Hamer, “I find it better to talk about Scandinavian films, because the scale of the individual output is small. If you take the countries altogether, at least you get a bigger crop of good films. It’s easier to sell them and talk about them that way abroad.”

What seems to distinguish this current crop of talents from previous Scandi cultural invaders is their wariness toward being co-opted by the Hollywood establishment.

They announce they wish to steer clear of the path laid out by Lasse Hallstrom, the most celebrated Scandinavian director to work in Hollywood -- his “Chocolat” (2000) and “The Cider House Rules” (1999) were nominated for best picture Oscars.

“Hollywood is the opposite of everything I stand for,” Moodysson says. Currently at work on an untitled film that he has described as “a mix of Big Brother and Hieronymus Bosch but with kindness and consideration,” the director insists that compromising for success abroad is not a choice.

“In a more totalitarian-oriented society, like for instance America, I probably wouldn’t have been allowed to make movies at all.

“Then,” he concludes enigmatically, “I would have become a professional cyclist or a poet or a priest or a guerrilla soldier or a graffiti painter instead. Perhaps that would have been better?”

“The most important thing is to be independent and to be in control of everything, and I understand that it is very hard to obtain that in the States,” Kari says. “That’s not even an option for me -- to work in that spirit. But if I can be independent, then why not?”

As for Hamer, he is collaborating on his next picture, “Factotum,” with the godfather of American indie film, Jim Jarmusch. Based on a novel by California poet Charles Bukowski, the movie will be shot in April in Minneapolis -- far from the embrace of Hollywood -- with the same line producer who helped nurse last year’s indie hit “American Splendor” into being.

“We got some money from Norway, Germany, Italy, France ... nothing from the U.S., but that’s typical,” Hamer says. “The project is something that has organically grown between Jim and me. I hadn’t seen Bukowski adapted like I’d like to see it -- it’s not that I necessarily wanted to do something in America -- that was secondary for me.”

Lars von Trier has famously never set foot in the U.S., yet his two most recent films not only take place in mythical representations of America, but are embedded with American lore, myth and politics.

“Dogville” is a three-hour-long parable on how the mercantile Protestant model enables the descent of decent folk into sadism and bigotry.

In it, the denizens of a tiny Depression-era burg become dangerously intoxicated with the power they come to have over a fugitive to whom they offer sanctuary. And the conclusion that the film forcefully puts forth is that evil always seems to beget evil.

“ ‘Dogville’ takes place in America, but it’s only America seen from my point of view,” Von Trier explains in production notes. “In my ‘American’ films, I mirror what information comes to me, and my feelings about that information.”

In talking about his first U.S.-centric project, Hammer says: “I try to tell only stories that have a universal appeal. Ultimately, there is something about Bukowski’s work that is more including than excluding.” The same can be said, undoubtedly, about American culture -- these filmmakers seem poised to penetrate.

Sorina Diaconescu can be contacted at calendar@latimes.com.