‘Nuuk’ review: A mystery in need of more heat

The city of Nuuk, I imagine, is a very cold place. Its citizens, all Danish, are probably voracious consumers of herring which populate the icy waters surrounding the city. 

The movie entitled Nuuk is similarly cold. Its main characters, curiously all Filipinos or of Filipino descent, are oblivious to red herrings which populate the plot to the point of making it more a puzzle to be solved than a story to engage with.

Pregnant with promise

Veronica Velasco’s Nuuk is pregnant with promise.

The setting is gloriously unique and the film immediately latches on one of the more compelling aspects of the snow-filled town, which that there is an alarmingly high rate of suicides amongst the city’s youth. The film then proceeds somberly to introduce its main character Elaisa (Alice Dixson), a widow whose sole escape from the depression of losing her husband and being away from her homeland is Prozac which she now doesn’t have. She meets Mark (Aga Muhlach), another Filipino, in the clinic, befriending him for the purpose of purchasing anti-depression pills.

It’s a cleverly conceived meet-cute, one that seems tailor-made for this age where mental health awareness is a rage. Velasco then molds a romance out of the two individuals’ unique longings, crafting what seems to be a love story where alienation and desolation are compelling backdrops. To add more burden to Elaisa and Mark’s seemingly poignant quest for companionship, Karl (Ujarneq Fleischer), makes his appearance, contributing to the complications of the romance all his angst and anger against the cold world. 

Easily, Nuuk has all the makings of a novel romance. It seems to push for second chances at joy for middle-aged lovers who seem to have been deprived of the warmth they deserve. It is set in an exotic place that is not unduly used just to provide alluring vistas for its lovebirds’ swoony interludes. Most importantly, it appreciates the depth and challenges of a burgeoning relationship amidst mental issues that are sourced not just from narrative conceit but from distance, monochrome landscapes, and seemingly incompatible cultures intermingling.

Cleverer than necessary

Unfortunately, Nuuk busies itself in an effort to be cleverer than necessary.

The romance is just an element of a twist. The brilliant depictions of the crests and troughs, and the pleasures and pains of finding love in a hopeless place are just tools to distract to accomplish the task of making its grand reveal as surprising as possible. 

Nuuk is a case where the hook is more compelling than the catch. 

When the film detaches itself from being about miserable people taking a chance at happiness and morphs into something darker and farther from truly human concerns, it throws away rationality and logic, opening itself to inexplicable challenges to its internal logic, rendering all its efforts to create realistic characters wasted because everything’s a ploy. 

The film’s endeavor to cover the darker side of human beings is not the problem. It is how the film is ultimately structured to give utmost importance to twist that is its most glaring fault. In the film’s misdirected effort to be ingenious, it glosses over specifying the context of all the unhinged deceit that is its fuel. The film should have been examining the divided identities of the youth of mixed racial lineage and the fragile responsibilities of their parents who have been rendered inutile by being lonely strangers in a strange land. It could have been something like Lav Diaz’s Batang West Side (2001), where the crime is not the core but is only symptomatic of a more compelling rot that inhabits the diaspora. 

However, the film becomes preoccupied in making the love story possible, turning its shift to suspense into a mere curve ball than a desire for real discourse.

It really is quite a missed opportunity.

Distant and unfamiliar lands

Nuuk is still an intriguing mood piece.

It may not be as successful as it wants to be but the traces of ambition it somewhat reveals is proof that creativity in storytelling is definitely not lacking in this trend of setting Filipino stories in distant and unfamiliar lands. – Rappler.com

Francis Joseph Cruz litigates for a living and writes about cinema for fun. The first Filipino movie he saw in the theaters was Carlo J. Caparas’ Tirad Pass.

Since then, he’s been on a mission to find better memories with Philippine cinema.