Festival de Cannes 2024 | When the Light Breaks

When the Light Breaks (Ljósbrot), the latest offering from Icelandic director Rúnar Rúnarsson, is a brief and searingly honest meditation on grief and the comfort that we can find in unexpected places. Anchored by a steely and transparent performance from lead actress Elín Hall (Let Me Fall) and punctuated by the haunting music of late Icelandic composer Jóhann Jóhannsson (Sicario), anyone who has suffered a sudden loss will recognize pieces of their own experience in this intimate tale set over the course of one achingly difficult day.

The film opens with Una (Hall) and Diddi (Baldur Einarsson) gazing at the setting sun over a watery horizon. In addition to attending the same Reykjavik art school, the pair are in a band with Diddi’s childhood friend and roommate Gunni (Mikael Kaaber). Unbeknownst to their friends, Una and Diddi have fallen deeply in love, and are tired of hiding it. Diddi is heading home to break up with his girlfriend Klara (Katla Njálsdóttir) in the morning, and they idly spend the evening contemplating their future together. With the intimacy of a couple who have been together for years, they lie in bed chattering about where to travel … Faeroe Islands? Japan? Or maybe they should just have babies instead? The road ahead feels joyful and full of possibility.

Their happiness is cut short, however, when a fireball rips through a traffic tunnel as Diddi is making his way back home to the Westfjords. With dozens killed or missing, the accident is declared a national disaster, but Una and her friends cling to a shred of hope that Diddi might still emerge unscathed. Wading through a sea of tears at the Red Cross, however, the reality seems to wash over her. When she catches a glimpse of Gunni and his friends in a desperate and tearful embrace, she understands that the worst has come to pass. Diddi is gone.

Unable to cope in the moment, she escapes the claustrophobia of the grieving crowd and her inability to express the depth of her connection to the man she loved, and runs off. Her father picks her up and manages to bring her a few moments of comfort – even humour – in this dark moment, making a short and necessary stop for a couple of Icelandic hot dogs (if you know you know). Our ability to laugh even in our darkest moments is a testament to the resilience of the human spirit, offering a glimmer of hope that one day, the pain might lessen enough to let a bit of happiness creep in once again.

Gunni begs Una to join him and Diddi’s hometown friends Bassi (Ágúst Wigum) and Siggi (Gunnar Hrafn Kristjánsson) at their regular bar, where they drink and reminisce, and try to figure out how to grieve this man they thought would be in their lives forever. With Gunni the only one who knew Una and Diddi’s secret, the group laments the plight of Diddi’s girlfriend Klara: the accepted widow of the situation. Already deep in the throes of grief, Una’s pain is magnified as she forced to sit silently as they laud them as the perfect couple, destined to be together forever.

When Klara arrives, she looks so much like Una that I would have believed the actors were sisters. Their similarities, however, seem to stop there … and their shared love for Diddi of course. While Klara seems instantly drawn to Una in these vulnerable moments, the women are very different. Una is cautious, but throughout the course of the day each sees a mirror of her own pain in the other, and they form an unlikely and unarticulated connection to one another. Back at the same spot Una visited with Diddi only a day earlier, the women watch as the sun dips over the horizon. Klara muses that it’s as if Diddi is the sun and they are here to say goodbye. As the film draws to a close, the women lie awkwardly in Diddi’s bed, and finally giving in to their shared painful connection, take comfort in a loving embrace.

When the Light Breaks premieres in the Un Certain Regard programme at the 77^th Cannes Film Festival.

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