Wild­land

As the old say­ing goes, don’t look a gift horse in the mouth. And, when 17-year-old recent­ly orphaned Ida (San­dra Guld­berg Kampp) is sent to live with what seems to be a lov­ing clus­ter of her extend­ed fam­i­ly, the com­fort of her new predica­ment makes it easy to turn a blind eye to an ever-grow­ing series of red flags.

Hav­ing lost her moth­er in a car acci­dent short­ly before turn­ing 18, Ida was giv­en no oth­er choice but to move in with her clos­est fam­i­ly mem­ber – in this case, her estranged aunt Bod­il (Sidse Babett Knud­sen). The matri­arch is always impec­ca­bly pol­ished, her pres­ence in a room nev­er not felt. She spoils and cod­dles all of her three sons, plac­ing soft kiss­es on their adult lips and lov­ing­ly but­ter­ing their sand­wich­es. Her eyes, how­ev­er, shine brighter for David (Elliott Cros­set Hove), the dar­ling, sen­si­tive mid­dle child.

Jeanette Nordahl’s direc­to­r­i­al debut clev­er­ly unveils the family’s idio­syn­crasies through the ins and outs of their drug traf­fick­ing busi­ness. Bodil’s house func­tions accord­ing to Michael Corleone’s infa­mous ​“don’t ever take sides with any­one against the fam­i­ly” rules; their inner cir­cle is held firm­ly by the shack­les of loy­al­ty. Yet what the dot­ing moth­er believes to be love trans­lates into a suf­fo­cat­ing grasp – the tighter she holds, the more ago­nis­ing the lack of air.

It is pre­cise­ly this sense of claus­tro­pho­bia that enhances the film’s por­trait of a world that runs on death­less cycles. Here, there is no illu­sion of a pos­si­ble escape. Addic­tion feeds into coin that feeds into dan­ger that feeds into fear that feeds into addic­tion, and Ida is yet anoth­er cog in the machine, trag­i­cal­ly trapped in the nether­world that doomed her moth­er – an addict herself.

Para­dox­i­cal­ly, as the brood’s oper­a­tion becomes more vio­lent, their domes­tic rou­tine becomes more ten­der. Blood is wiped from hands just in time to clap hap­py birth­day, and words – regard­less of their weight – are nev­er hushed. As well, kin­ship equals undi­min­ished trust as Nor­dahl builds on the idea that imposed close­ness only aids a pound­ing, gut­tur­al need to run. Ida’s only refuge from this mad­den­ing plight is through the throb­bing beats of elec­tron­ic music, as night­clubs pro­vide an easy shot of bliss­ful sweat-induced freedom.

The rare moments she finds her­self away from the clan, on the oth­er hand, are filled with a deaf­en­ing cacoph­o­ny of sta­t­ic – an unsi­lence­able reminder that, no mat­ter how hard she pulls, the cuffs won’t loosen. Con­cur­rent­ly, the teen nav­i­gates the arche­typ­al woes of ado­les­cence, hes­i­tant­ly explor­ing her cloud­ed sex­u­al­i­ty while grow­ing ever-aware of the chau­vin­is­tic mine­field women are made to walk through.

“For some peo­ple, things go wrong before they even begin”, Ida painful­ly pon­ders, sum­maris­ing Nordahl’s enthralling explo­ration of doomed fates as it draws to its strik­ing con­clu­sion. The words are only fit­ting, as Wild­land stands as a bleak reminder that, to some, hope is noth­ing but a los­ing game.