Children Of God's Earth

This sparsely written melodrama set on a small Norwegian island is Laila Mikkelsen's first film after the strong and very moving LITTLE IDA, which told about the wartime child of a Norwegian woman and a German soldier. The story revolves around Drecker, the preteenage ward of an old peasant couple. We see through her wide eyes the slow growth of violence on the island. She witnesses a proposition by a nearby fisherman as he promises a mild-mannered halfwit giant a large sum of money to rip off another man's head. She also takes up with a consumptive teenage boy who dies trying to run after her when he has failed to embrace her beyond a shy allotted kiss. This simpl...