Mordsaga aka Story of a Murder. (1977) – Reynir Oddson.

'The spankings were only a pretext for touching you!!!'

This rigorously compelling Icelandic drama vividly presents a broken upper middle-class bourgeois family, a long-suffering wife (Gudrun Asmundsdottir), and 18yr old Anna (Thora Sigurthorsdottir), both boozily oppressed by a cruel, overbearing, patently incestuous patriarch (Steindor Hjorelfsson). Not only is Mordsaga a genuinely suspenseful family drama, the striking interior décor, appealing period fashions, and time-capsule views of 70s Iceland prove no less fascinating. My knowledge of Icelandic cinema is sparse, but I can't imagine I could have asked for a more delicious entre than Reynir Oddson's Mordsaga.

I've long had a penchant for 1970s era cinema, I appreciate the aesthetic, and the philosophic sensibilities, especially when the bolder film-makers take their sharpened scalpels, exposing the rot fulminating beneath 'polite societies' monied facade. I liked how the director revealed his intent for the film by having one of the secondary characters smugly mansplaining Claude Chabrol's cinematic modus operandi to girlfriend Anna, the innocent victim of her father's worst abuses. The truly fine cast are absolutely superb, and the able director most certainly delivers during his thrilling, intensely dramatic final act.