Chichester Cinema at New Park
The Frost
UK premiere
Freely inspired by Ibsen's short story ‘Little Eyolf’, ‘The Frost’ is a psychological drama turning on the disintegration of a marriage after a son's death.
Ferran Audí’s ‘The Frost’, is an ambitious and haunting modern adaptation based on the great Norwegian dramatist Henrik Ibsen's play ‘Little Eyolf’ and allows us to successfully plunge into the claustrophobic and meandering world of sexual relationships and the solitude of love, which the author so constantly and successfully cultivated in the puritanical Norway of the 19th century. After the accidental death of their only son, Rita (Aitana Sánchez-Gijón) and Alfred (Trond Espen Seim) feel such remorse that they engage in a fierce fight of mutual destruction. Guilt confronts them with a painful recognition: obsessed by their selfish little needs, they forgot to love their son.
Contrary to a materialistic or naturalistic tradition, Ibsen creates a world where dream and reality flow into each other in perfect continuity, without hindrance. It’s not about what’s real or not; it’s about accepting this hybrid as the “truth” the characters live in, as is reflected in this challenging modern realisation.
David Omede's photography is extraordinary, of an indescribable beauty and a luminous precision, which reconstructs the atmospheres and landscapes that haunted Henrik Ibsen's tormented mind, and which heightens the unending dichotomy between reality and dream, pain and solace, desire and frustration which underlines the whole movie.
This is the first UK screening of this memorable film, which includes a small role by Bergman’s great Swedish muse Bibi Anderson as the Widow. In English and Norwegian. (Subtitles)
(With thanks to Raül Perales and Alta Realitat, Spain for this UK Premiere)
Norway · 
Spain · 2009 · Ferran Audi · 107min
