by James Mottram
It’s midway through the 2021 Cannes Film Festival when FilmInk feasts on the world premiere of Lamb, the single-weirdest movie in the official selection. Like so many films, it had been delayed by COVID-19, so the premiere was full of tears. “It’s almost like we’ve been pregnant with a baby for two years,” says actress Noomi Rapace, the following day. “Yesterday was the big release. It was born yesterday. And it was a very emotional moment. So, today I feel very happy but also a bit overwhelmed and a bit lost.”
We’re sitting on the Scandinavian Terrace, with Rapace – who sprung to fame as Lisbeth Salander in the original Swedish version of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo – relaxed enough to go mask-free through the interview. It’s easy to see why she considers Lamb, co-written and directed by Icelandic first-time feature filmmaker Valdimar Jóhannsson, as comparable to giving birth, given the subject matter. A story that’s not easy to discuss without spoilers, if you’re the sort of cinemagoer who prefers to just take a chance on something fiercely unique, stop reading now and just go and see it.
A former grip and camera assistant, Jóhannsson has been toying with Lamb for ten years, a story built out of Icelandic folk stories and myths that taps into universal feelings of grief, loss, and parenthood.
Set on a remote sheep farm, the story follows childless couple Maria and Ingvar (Rapace and Hilmir Snær Guðnason). The first half-hour or so of this slow burner sees them go about their business during lambing season. Then, they are given an unexpected gift: a ewe gives birth to a lamb with the body of a child. Rather than run for the hills, they adopt this bizarre hybrid, treating it as their own.
Understandably, it was a difficult sell to financiers. “I remember me and my producer, we started trying to raise money… sometimes, we just had this feeling of ‘just go home’. We really wanted to create a film we had not seen but really wanted to see.”
Over time Jóhannsson honed the script with his co-writer, famed poet, novelist, and fellow Icelander Sjón, whose work has been translated into thirty languages. “I was a big fan of Sjón, and my producers, they introduced me, and we had a coffee and after that we started meeting twice a week for a few years.” Eventually, they wrote a treatment, but it was a drawn-out process. “We were maybe watching films or looking at some paintings…it was not in the beginning that we had the layout of the story. Sometimes, we were writing a scene because of some paintings.”
Gradually, the story came together as Jóhannsson, whose grandparents’ own sheep farm had also served as inspiration, figured out a way to introduce Ada, the baby with the lamb’s head. Initially, the infant body is hidden away under clothing and, just like the shark in Jaws, the filmmaker holds back on the big reveal. “My feeling is we have to keep it [hidden] as long as possible,” he says, “and Sjón is very good at rhythm. That helped a lot in the script.”
When Jóhannsson met Rapace, the project began to fall into place. “I’m rather shy and it was difficult for me to go and visit her,” he admits. “I didn’t say much. I didn’t know what to say. But I made a look-book, because I really wanted to show her how the film would be. For me, I wanted to make a visual poem. I wanted to have as little dialogue as possible and have very strong images, so we don’t have to explain the dialogue. I was extremely happy that she came on board. It was amazing to have her.”
Naturally, the actress was initially taken aback when she read such an offbeat script. “You don’t know if it’s funny or if it’s weird, or disgusting,” she says. It was a feeling she took into the shoot, at least briefly. “It took me two or three days and then the creepiness was gone. And I was totally immersed into this – it was totally normal to be shooting with lambs, babies and dummies.”
The “lambs, babies and dummies” were all cleverly blended to create Ada, with VFX supervisor Peter Hjorth (Antichrist) overseeing the visual effects. The fact that Ada was conjured by various methods was helpful but also bewildering at times, says Rapace. “When you had the baby, you’d think it was the lamb head and then the baby’s hands pulled my ear… so, in my head, I melted those two bodies into one. I started seeing Ada in my dreams while we were shooting… before they created her.”
Shot in the rugged but majestic terrain of rural Iceland, Rapace also had to deliver lambs for real. “It was raw, beautiful, brutal,” she says. “Obviously, you can’t really practice. I was waiting in my trailer for the knock, and they came and said, ‘There is a lamb coming’ and I’m running down, rolling up my sleeves, down on my knees and pulling out something I’ve never seen before. I will never forget the lamb opened his eyes for the first time and I took the mucus off his face and the first breath… That’s life but it’s also so fragile. That really placed me in the deepest place of Maria – [and] that was my first day on set!”
Rapace, who lived in Iceland for three years when she was a child, was so convincing delivering lambs, she even got offered a job. “The farmer said, ‘You’re doing a really good job, you can come and work for me.’ So, if this doesn’t work out…! But also, I grew up on a farm, so it’s not so far-fetched for me to go into a very practical life that is really close to nature and you follow the whole life circle of the animals. That was how I grew up.”
While Lamb is many things – not least a domestic drama, compounded by the arrival of Ingvar’s shady brother Pétur (Björn Hlynur Haraldsson) – Jóhannsson is keen to underline that it’s not meant to turn stomachs. “It’s not like a horror film or anything like that. It’s just a classical story with one surrealist element.”
Perhaps, what is so creepy is the family’s acceptance of this creature in their lives, the reasons only becoming clear later. “They start seeing Ada as something quite normal,” says Rapace.
That Jóhannsson also saw Lamb accepted into Cannes was a huge moment. “It’s such an honour,” he says. “I don’t know what to say… it’s like a dream. I’m just super-happy and glad, especially now. I’ve been super-stressed almost the whole time, but after the screening, now I feel a little bit more relaxed.” Even better, the film went on to win the Un Certain Regard – Prize of Originality, an award that couldn’t be more fitting for Lamb.
Lamb opens in cinemas on October 14, 2021
