''Cold Fever'' ( is, Á köldum klaka) is a 1995 Icelandic film directed by

Friðrik Þór Friðriksson Friðrik Þór Friðriksson (born 12 May 1954; pronounced ), sometimes credited as Fridrik Thor Fridriksson, is an Icelandic film director and producer. Biography Fridriksson started his film making career with experimental films and documentar ...

. It is a road movie set in

Iceland Iceland ( is, Ísland; ) is a Nordic island country in the North Atlantic Ocean and in the Arctic Ocean. Iceland is the most sparsely populated country in Europe. Iceland's capital and largest city is Reykjavík, which (along with its s ...

and was the first of Friðrik's films to be made in the

English language English is a West Germanic language of the Indo-European language family, with its earliest forms spoken by the inhabitants of early medieval England. It is named after the Angles, one of the ancient Germanic peoples that migrated to the is ...

. The movie depicts the travels of a Japanese man across Iceland. It was jokingly promoted as the best Icelandic-Japanese road movie of 1995.

Synopsis

Hirata is a successful Japanese businessman whose plan for a two-week winter holiday in Hawaii to play golf changes when his elderly grandfather reminds him that he should go to Iceland. Hirata's parents died there seven years ago, and the seven-year anniversary of a death is a significant event in Japanese culture. Hirata must perform a ceremony in the river where they died after drowning in an avalanche – the drowned must be fed by the surviving family members if they are to find peace. Hirata arrives in

Reykjavík Reykjavík ( ; ) is the capital and largest city of Iceland. It is located in southwestern Iceland, on the southern shore of Faxaflói bay. Its latitude is 64°08' N, making it the world's northernmost capital of a sovereign state. With a po ...

, Iceland. His final destination is a remote river on the far side of the island. He encounters one mishap and misadventure after another. He first accidentally gets on a wrong bus filled with German tourists traveling to see the hot springs. He also confronts a language barrier; Hirata cannot speak any Icelandic, and knows very little English. After his first day's misadventures, Hirata decides to purchase an ancient, bright red

Citroën DS The Citroën DS () is a Front-mid-engine, front-wheel-drive layout, front mid-engined, front-wheel drive executive car manufactured and marketed by Citroën from 1955 to 1975, in fastback/sedan, wagon/estate, and convertible body configurations ...

to make the journey. During the long drive, Hirata meets several strange people along the way. These include the mystical woman who sells him the car, that only plays one radio station. Next, Hirata meets a local woman who collects photographs of funerals. The following day, Hirata meets Jack and Jill, two American hitchhikers, who turn out to be armed and dangerous fugitives who proceed to steal his car. Nearing his destination on foot, Hirata arrives in a small village where he meets an old man named Siggi, the owner of a local lodge who teaches Hirata how to drink the most potent alcoholic beverage in Iceland. After explaining his determination to travel to where his parents died, Hirata is aided by Siggi who borrows a pair of Icelandic horses from a local farmer, and the two of them travel on horseback to Hirata's destination. After riding across an ice cap glacier, over a ridge and into the valley where Hirata's parents died, he dismounts and tells Siggi that he must go on alone to complete his journey. After traversing a rickety bridge to the river, Hirata arrives at the river bank where he performs his cleansing ceremony at last. He then rejoins Siggi waiting for him and they both ride on their horses down a gully where they make it to a beach and the final shot shows them riding down the coast towards a nearby coastal village which hopefully will have a ferry to take Hirata back to Reykjavík and presumably back to Japan.

Credits

Cast

Masatoshi Nagase is a Japanese actor. He is best known in the West for his roles in Friðrik Þór Friðriksson's '' Cold Fever'' and Jim Jarmusch's ''Mystery Train''. Nagase was described by Todd Brown of Twitch Film as "one of the great unsung heroes of Japane ...

: Hirata *

Lili Taylor Lili Anne Taylor (born February 20, 1967) is an American actress. She came to prominence with supporting parts in the films '' Mystic Pizza'' (1988) and '' Say Anything...'' (1989), before establishing herself as one of the key figures of 1990s ...

: Jill *

Fisher Stevens Fisher Stevens (born Steven Fisher; November 27, 1963) is an American actor, director, producer and writer. As an actor, he is best known for his portrayals of Ben in ''Short Circuit'' and ''Short Circuit 2'', Chuck Fishman on the 1990s televis ...

: Jack *

Gísli Halldórsson Gísli Halldórsson (2 February 1927 – 27 July 1998) was an Icelandic actor of theatre, radio, film and television, and one of the most popular Icelandic actors of the late twentieth century. He is known internationally for playing the lead r ...

: Siggi *

Seijun Suzuki , born (24 May 1923 – 13 February 2017), was a Japanese filmmaker, actor, and screenwriter. His films are known for their jarring visual style, irreverent humour, nihilistic cool and entertainment-over-logic sensibility. He made 40 predo ...

: Grandfather *Laura Huges: Laura *Jóhannes B. Guðmundsson: Old Man *Bríet Héðinsdóttir: Old Woman *Guðmundur Karl Sigurdórsson: Guest at Thorrablot (uncredited) * Magnús Ólafsson *Rúrik Haraldsson * Flosi Ólafsson: Hotel owner *Ari Matthíasson *Álfrún Örnólfsdóttir *Hallbjörn Hjartarson: Cowboy of the North *Katrín Ólafsdóttir

Crew

* Director:

* Screenplay: Jim Stark and Friðrik Þór Friðriksson * Producer: Jim Stark * Co-producer:

George Gund III George Gund III (May 7, 1937 – January 15, 2013) was an American businessman and sports entrepreneur. Gund was born in Cleveland, Ohio, on May 7, 1937, to Jessica Roesler and George Gund II, a powerful banker in Cleveland. A high-school dro ...

* Executive producer: Reinhard Brundig,

Peter Aalbæk Jensen Peter Aalbæk Jensen (born 8 April 1956 in Osted) is a Danish film producer who in 1992 with director Lars von Trier founded the Danish film company Zentropa and later its huge studio complex Filmbyen. His father was writer Erik Aalbæk Jensen. ...

, and Christa Saredi * Line producer: Ari Kristinsson * Director of Photography: Ari Kristinsson * Production Designer: Árni Páll Jóhannsson * Editor: Steingrímur Karlsson * Film edition: Steingrímur Karlsson * Sound Design: Kjartan Kjartansson * Sound edition: Ingvar Lundberg * Music:

Hilmar Örn Hilmarsson Hilmar Örn Hilmarsson (; born 23 April 1958), also known as HÖH, is a musician, an art director, and '' allsherjargoði'' (''chief goði'') of Ásatrúarfélagið ("the Ásatrú Association"). Hilmar Örn Hilmarsson was a pioneer in the use ...

** Featuring “Killer Boogie” by

Þeyr Þeyr () was an Icelandic New wave music, new wave band from the early 1980s. Origins The origins of Þeyr date back to the late 1970s when singer Magnús Guðmundsson, bassist Hilmar Örn Agnarsson and Hilmar Örn Hilmarsson (drums and synthesi ...

* Costume design: María Ólafsdóttir * Production manager: Inga Björk Sólnes * Gaffer: Andreas Burkhard * Generator operator: Eggert Einarsson * Still photography: Mark Higashino * Script supervisor: Inga Lísa Middleton * Colour grader: Petra Schütt * Production: Icelandic Film Corporation, Iciclefilm,

Pandora Film Pandora Film, or Pandora Filmproduktion, is a German film production and distribution company, founded by Karl Baumgartner and Reinhard Brundig. The last film they distributed was Norwegian Wood (2007), which was released in 2004 in Germany. Fi ...

, Sunrice Inc., Zentropa Entertainments,

* Support: Film Fond of Hamburg

Critical response

review aggregator A review aggregator is a system that collects reviews of products and services (such as films, books, video games, software, hardware, and cars). This system stores the reviews and uses them for purposes such as supporting a website where users ...

website

Rotten Tomatoes Rotten Tomatoes is an American review-aggregation website for film and television. The company was launched in August 1998 by three undergraduate students at the University of California, Berkeley: Senh Duong, Patrick Y. Lee, and Stephen Wang ...

, the film holds an approval rating of 95% based on 20 reviews, and an

average rating In ordinary language, an average is a single number taken as representative of a list of numbers, usually the sum of the numbers divided by how many numbers are in the list (the arithmetic mean). For example, the average of the numbers 2, 3, 4, 7 ...

of 7.5/10.

References

External links

*
Cold Fever
' at the Icelandic Film Corporation * * *
Cold Fever
' at the Shopicelandic.com {{Festroia Best Film 1995 films 1990s adventure films 1995 comedy-drama films English-language Icelandic films 1990s Icelandic-language films Icelandic independent films 1990s road movies Films directed by Friðrik Þór Friðriksson Films scored by Hilmar Örn Hilmarsson Films set in Iceland Japan in non-Japanese culture 1990s English-language films 1995 multilingual films Icelandic multilingual films