Permille

Permille (Prómill) – Trailer for the Short Film by Marteinn Thorsson on Vimeo.
Permille describes a couple of days in the life of permanent party man “Erik”, who’s either a dentist or a lawyer. The day after a seriously good party, sitting with his girlfriend having a chat, he meets people he doesn’t remember. Has he arrived at a crossroads? Is Erik in deeper trouble than usual?

Permille gets a great review from Neil Young’s Film Lounge (Tribune Magazine UK). Four star review:
… pound-for-pound, the most satisfying local production I saw in Reykjavik – the 14-minute short, Permille (Prómill) by writer-director Marteinn Thórsson (proper Icelandic transliteration: Þórsson). It features Undercurrent supporting player Ólafur Darri Ólafsson very much front-and-centre as Eirik, a hallucination-prone, booze-addled Reykjavik party-boy slumping drunkenly towards middle-age. The bottle is Eirik’s way of dealing with what the film describes as “the shitty state of the country” – and Þórsson could have found plentiful real-life inspirations on the city’s streets, especially after dark.
According to Þórsson, “the flick was shot on a lark last May as part of an experiment to utilise the Canon 1D and 5D cameras in feature filmmaking.” If so, this larkish experiment must be counted a notable success, as Permille deploys an uncompromisingly scuzzy aesthetic to take us right into the woozy, paranoid delusions of its protagonist. The results are deliberately nightmarish and unpleasant in a manner that’s first grating, then stimulating and finally, thanks to a daringly abrupt denouement, audaciously jarring. Far from being some greenhorn neophyte, the fortyish Þórsson already has one feature to his name – 2004′s One Point O (aka Paranoia 1.0), featuring cult favourites Udo Kier, Lance Henriksen and Deborah Kara Unger. Permille suggests that his upcoming feature Stormland is worth keeping a weather-eye out for in 2011 – and that Iceland’s hardy cinema culture won’t let minor matters like ash-clouds and international financial crises drag it down.