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Pretty Good

Memorable, crazy movie

A Disappointing Continuation

This is a tender, generous movie that likes its characters and presents them as real people, full of flaws and strengths.

... In the rarely seen Icelandic movie A Man Like Me, the audience will laugh out loud amid the breakdown and aftermath of the relationship. The 2002 film is director Robert Douglas's most commercially successful. He also met his future wife, a Chinese-born woman, on the set. But the film is refreshingly free of Orientalist clichés, perhaps because the leading woman's character was originally conceived as a Pole. Douglas tells the Global Times that filmmakers decided to cast the role with a Hong Kong actress Stephanie Che so could widen the commercial appeal of the film. Douglas said they also wanted to visit a more exotic location than Poland. In the opening scene, the main character reveals on a televised dating show that his longest ever relationship ended after just three months when he found a used prophylactic in his bed. The waitresses at his regular Chinese restaurant where he often eats tease him about being famous. Júlli agrees to help paint the house of the main love interest, Qi, and he meets her daughter. A montage of syrupy moments backed by a romantic songs shows the couple falling in love. This scene is a homage to cheesy Hong Kong romantic comedies, Douglas says. Júlli asks Qi to marry him, and in a twist, she says no, asking him if he thinks she needs a visa. Júlli is devastated, and the two stop talking. To cheer up, Júlli quits his job, gets a new haircut and clothes, and starts selling a health supplement as part of a pyramid scheme. He fails miserably. The only customer is his father, a musician with a single hit record twenty years before that won a "Silver Cassette" for selling 2,500 copies. The father dreams of representing Iceland in the annual Eurovision music contest. Qi returns to China to care for her sick mother, and Júlli follows, intending to profess his love for her. When he arrives at her village in Guangdong, he sees her with her ex-husband, and returns home in despair. The film ends with Júlli and Qi having a chance meeting. They have a pleasant formal conversation, and promise to meet again for coffee. Neither of them acknowledge the fact that she is many months pregnant. Júlli's father, meanwhile, gets rich selling the nutritional supplement to U.S. soldiers based in Iceland and has a second rise to fame, representing Iceland in the Eurovision competition.... A Man Like Me is the precise kind of film that people attend independent screenings to see – intelligent, funny, movie, and unknown to most people outside of Iceland, where it was a money-making hit....

What is very interesting about this movie is how it brings together two really similar cultures. While Stephanie Che in the movie is from the mainland, she is actually a rising star in today's Hong Kong cinema recently starring in "Men Suddenly in Black" and her character really reflects the ex-patriot longing felt by many who leave HK. This is placed next to Iceland which is its own isolated world from the rest of Europe. Ex-pats of Iceland also have the same feeling as those of HK, of leaving a very small place but having intense longing for it still. J¨®n Gnarr's character is like an expat living in his own world, trying to get by. This is where the comedy kicks in everywhere. The movie even has time to include a whole satirical commentary on pyramid schemes which Gnarr gets into which affect even places like Iceland. The central attention of the movie in the end is the social commentary. Iceland knows just as little as Hong Kong, vice versa. Us Americans can perceive the subtle racism commentary but actually we realize Iceland, regardless of how developed and advanced a country, is still culturally a small Midwest town. In spite of black cardigan sweaters, cashmere scarfs, and hip furniture, ignorance is a pervalent trait which someone on an isolated world can't escape. The movie also achieves a successful combination of Icelandic, English, Chinese Cantonese, and Chinese Mandarin. Icelandic and Cantonese of which are languages which are being threatened to diminish at the hands of the accompanying one. The title A Man Like Me harkens really to Gnarr's situation living alone, finding money, trying love at middle-age when everyone else is already better off. But the story shows how so much is out of control of your own and the end lets you know life is just life.

It is in a way a beautiful film. It´s a life we all know, maybe not our life, but life of a friend or someone we know. It´s going the wrong way about everything, and as soon as he let go of the dream it started to come true. Happiness isnt easy to find, sometimes it´s better to let it find you.Þorsteinn Guðmundsson gives the best performance. He plays this loser hilarious who is oppressed by his wife and try´s to hold his head high and be proud.This is in my opinion it´s a great film which I think even people from other countries then Iceland would enjoy.

I saw this film while in Iceland this summer. I've only seen one other Icelandic film which at the time did not impress me, that film was 101 Reykjavik. This film has some similarities but all in all it's a much more enjoyable experience and a nicer film. It's a contemporary Reykjavik story about icelanders and foreigners mixing it up with some funny results and honest views on Icelandic society. Stephanie Che plays a character from mainland China that's just moved to Iceland in hope of a new life, there she meets an Icelandic postal worker and falls in love. The film is mostly about the guy and his family and how the deal with there relationships with somebody from the other side of the world. The film is very well acted and it has a warm feelgood quality to it. The director seems to have given the actors some freedom as to where to go with dialogue and even scenes and that gives the film a raw and spontaneous quality and some odd humor every now and again. All in all this is a good film and I certainly hope it will get a wider audience outside of Iceland.