I know I decided to sit out my usual weekend movie treks for a few weeks while the Delta Variant was a thing, but the one movie I really wish I had seen during that period was the indie movie Nine Days, a little something that looked the sort of really weird that I tend to really like. Now that Delta seems to be disappearing (or not), well, there was no way in hell I was going to miss the Icelandic/Swedish/Polish production Lamb. It’s A24, and the trailers showed the sort of really weird that, yes, I tend to really like.
Point is, I did see the movie, and yes, it was weird.
After an opening scene where, on a snowy Christmas night in rural Iceland, some unseen, heavy-breathing thing goes to a barn and does something with what looks like a willing sheep, we cut to the story of a couple lost in grief. The only human residents of the farm are childless couple Ingvar (Hilmir Snær Guðnason) and Maria (the excellent Noomi Rapace). For ultimately unexplained but heavily implied reasons, Maria is desperate and miserable while Ingvar seems to be enjoying the quiet life on the farm. But then, once spring rolls around and the ewes begin giving birth to the next generation of lambs, something odd happens: one of the sheep gives birth to some sort of human/lamb hybrid, a creature with the head of a sheep and one sheep’s leg in place of an arm, but otherwise, it is a human baby that they name Ada. The couple adopts the child, neither really knowing or understanding where a baby like that could come from. Quite frankly, they don’t even really question it.
Such an adoption does not go off without a hitch. Ada’s biological mother will not leave the child alone despite Maria’s shouting at the animal to go away, and Ingvar’s shifty brother Petur (Björn Hlynur Haraldsson) shows up, and he seems to be the only one who, at least initially, seems to recognize how unusual this whole situation is. Ada does tend to charm everyone she meets, even as she can only bleat like a lamb, with only the family dog being somewhat wary of her at times.
This movie is a slow burn of a film, one that mostly implies answers and, despite being labeled as some kind of horror movie, isn’t all that scary. It’s more of a domestic drama with the odd lamb-child hybrid in the middle of the whole thing until the true horror elements do opt to appear. I had assumed, incorrectly, that Ingvar would be a problem for Maria, someone who recognizes the fact that Ada is neither sheep nor human, but nothing like that happens. He’s as happy to have Ada in the house as Maria is. Likewise, this a movie that plays a human killing a sheep like an act of cold-blooded murder while the unspeaking Ada has to express human emotions with an inhuman face, something she does far better than any character in the “live action” Lion King.
Quite frankly, Ada is something to behold. The lamb head looks very good, but not exactly perfect, in most shots when her body is visible, but I also noticed the sheep leg that was her right arm hung at an odd angle, looking rather thin in the sleeves of the sweaters and shirts she wore, befitting the odd anatomy that would have to go into a being like her. What was her purpose for the movie? If anything, she’s something of an oasis in this world of misery that the humans she meets seem to be living in, a being that does seem to bring joy and comfort, but even she knows, whatever she’s doing with Maria and Ingvar, it’s only temporary, and there will be misery in the end.
Grade: A-
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