Astropia: A Little Slice of Joy

This morning, I’ve just been watching (on my computer) one of the most purely enjoyable movies I’ve seen in a long time. It’s called Astropia, it’s from Iceland, and if there were any common sense in this world, it would be in a theater near you RIGHT NOW. You can see the trailer on YouTube.

Once upon a time in Iceland, there was a beautiful young princess named Hildur who was in love with a merchant prince of cars. Surely she was living one of the romance novels she enjoyed. But little did Hildur know that her merchant prince was about to be arrested by the police.

With nowhere to go and no money — not to mention reporters on her tail — she was forced to take refuge with her sister and nephew, and try to find a job. Fortunately, her little nephew led her to a magical place that actually wanted her help — a comics/gaming/movie/book store named Astropia. Among its strange folk, Hildur begins to build a new life for herself. But the evil prince had other plans….

The characters are nicely drawn. Many movies about geeks stick to a single stereotype or group of stereotypes. This one gives you real people whom you’d like to know more about, and some fairly realistic interactions between different types of personalities. The moment when Hildur inadvertently wins over Beta, the fierce resident female gamer, is played very quickly, and rings very true to life. I don’t know anyone exactly like Astropia’s owner, the clerks who work there, or his gaming group, but they feel like individuals I might easily meet at such a store.

The movie has a nice feature that’s lost on the DVD. Most of the movie is apparently shot in regular aspect, but during some fantasy sequences, the movie extended out to the sides to fill the wider local screens. This must have looked pretty freaky on the big screen. The DVD had to just letterbox the whole thing, so the expansion effect was lost.

This story probably could have worked in a lot of settings, but in Iceland — wow! The natural beauty of the outdoors! The charm of the cozy, hilly little streets! The scarily good-looking people, and the people who look like scary people in the sagas! Honestly, it makes living someplace where it’s dark and cold lots of the year actually look like a reasonable idea. If I lived near New York, I’d be checking prices for a flight to Iceland and a trip to visit Hafnafjordur. (In the spring. Late, late spring.)

Language geek moment: People with names straight out of the sagas! Learning a few words of Icelandic while watching the English subtitles! I now can say “Yow” for yes, “Ney” for no, and a few other words that I didn’t know when I woke up this morning. Oh, and the word for backstory is, logically enough, “back-saga”. (*delighted giggles*) Man, I gotta look up how this stuff is spelled….

Anyway, this movie is strongly recommended as a lovely fish out of water story that all sorts of people can probably enjoy. It may even spread a little understanding, not to mention attracting fannish Icelandic tourism. I would love to rewatch it, but I have to go to work now. 🙂

You can buy a DVD of this, among other Icelandic things, at nammi.is. They say the exchange rate is low, so now’s the time to buy Icelandic!

UPDATE: It occurs to me that I should point out that, while the DVD is cheap right now, international shipping never, ever is cheap, especially from rocks way out in the Atlantic Ocean. Calculate the shipping cost before you decide. Seriously.

Here’s a fan music video.