Dragonflies review

Bearded mountain man Eddie (Kim Bodnia) and his twentysomething girlfriend Maria (Maria Bonnevie) have a perfect, pastoral life in the Norwegian wilds. Living in an isolated farmhouse, they spend their days fishing, growing fir trees and having sex. It's a good life but it can't last. Eddie's shady past eventually catches up with him in the shape of Kullmann (Mikael Persbrandt), a heavy who arrives on Maria's birthday and refuses to leave until Eddie does that archetypal one last job.

Promising a nightmarish descent into psycho-thriller territory, this Scandinavian drama never quite reaches the delirious lows you'd hope for. Scripted by Nikolaj Frobenius, the man behind the original Insomnia, it resists diving headlong into darkness, instead opting to keep the mind games on an even keel. That said, helmer Marius Holst does a good job of homing in on the edgy sexual frisson, keeping all three actors playing at full tilt until the story's unlikely end.