Summerland () is an 80-minute 2010 Icelandic film, written and directed by GrÃÂmur Hákonarson, released by Blueeyes Productions/Sögn ehf.
The film is set in Kópavogur, a town south of ReykjavÃÂk strongly associated with urban legends about elves. The film takes its name from the place where spirits are said by one of the protagonists to go after death, a term attested more generally in Icelandic spiritualism.
The main character of the film is ÃÂskar ÃÂskarsson (played by Kjartan Guðjónsson). ÃÂskar's wife Lára (ÃÂlafÃÂa Hrönn Jónsdóttir) is a professional medium and, in the film's account, is aware of her past lives, able to see and talk to ghosts and to at least perceive the reality of elves. She is self-possessed, benevolent and it is implied that her business working as a medium in the local community, in which ÃÂskar is portrayed merely as an assistant, is a successful one. Meanwhile, ÃÂskar does not believe in elves and does not seem altogether convinced about ghosts. He has taken out a loan secured against the family home to create a tawdry tourist-trap called âÂÂGhost Houseâ in the basement, but the business is not going well. ÃÂskar is portrayed as anxious, and uncomfortable in his own efforts to take on the role of a successful wheeler-dealer. He is unable to admit the family's impending bankruptcy to Lára, who finds out about it from the spirit of a dead person; âÂÂvið hefðum aldrei átt að fara út àþennan túristabissnessâ (âÂÂwe should never have gone into this tourist businessâÂÂ), she comments.
Lára and ÃÂskar have two children: the teenager ÃÂsdÃÂs (HallfrÃÂður Tryggvadóttir), who tends to share her father's pragmatism and scepticism and later proves oblivious to the presence of ghosts, and the young boy Flóki (Nökkvi Helgason), who becomes best friends with a boy called ÃÂrándur (Alexander Valur Wiium Brynjólfsson) who turns out to live in the elf-stone in the family's garden; Flóki later also proves able to see and talk to ghosts.
Faced with a forced sale of the house, ÃÂskar agrees without telling Lára to the unexpected offer of an ostentatiously camp, gay German art-collector called Wolfgang Muller (Wolfgang Müller), who is enchanted by Icelandersâ credulity about elves, to buy the elf-stone in ÃÂskar's garden for â¬50,000, clearing ÃÂskar's debts and enabling him to buy an expensive flat-screen television. However, ÃÂrándur disappears and Lára falls into a coma; it later emerges that the vengeful elves have moved to a nearby elf-stone called Grásteinn, taking Lára's spirit with them.
Meanwhile, the municipal authorities of Kópavogur are planning to sell Grásteinn in order to facilitate a road-widening project, despite mysterious technical problems and Lára's protestations. Recognising the reality of elves, ÃÂskar and his children join protests at the building of the road; the leader of the protest makes a speech declaring
ÃÂskar lies down in front of a bulldozer whose brakes, implicitly through the intervention of the elves, fail, killing ÃÂskar, whereupon Lára awakes from her coma (somewhat disappointed to find that she has not arrived in Summerland). At ÃÂskar's funeral, the priest declares
The film ends with ÃÂskar's ghost returning to his family to continue a happy family life there and to haunt his own ghost-house, while ÃÂsis takes over the Ghost House business, which appears now to be a success.
A sub-plot in the film is ÃÂsdÃÂs's relationship with Sverrir ÃÂorsteinsson (Snorri Engilbertsson), chairman of the atheist organisation Andtrú (Disbelief), whose views are portrayed as extremist.
Alaric Hall argued that while "in some ways, the film is scrupulously gender-balanced" and emphasises that ÃÂskar's traditionalist model of masculinity is presented as outdated, "it takes a crisis caused by a man, and then makes the story all about the man"; in his view, the film "ultimately promotes a very traditional, nationalist view of masculinity".