Smilla's Sense of Snow | Telescope Film
Smilla's Sense of Snow

Smilla's Sense of Snow

Critic Rating

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  • Denmark,
  • Germany,
  • Sweden
  • 1997
  • · 121m

Director Bille August
Cast Julia Ormond, Gabriel Byrne, Richard Harris, Jim Broadbent, Tom Wilkinson, Robert Loggia
Genre Action, Crime, Drama, Mystery, Thriller

Smilla Jaspersen, half Danish, half Greenlander, attempts to understand the death of a small boy who falls from the roof of her apartment building. Suspecting wrongdoing, Smilla uncovers a trail of clues leading towards a secretive corporation that has made several mysterious expeditions to Greenland. Scenes from the film were shot in Copenhagen and western Greenland. The film was entered into the 47th Berlin International Film Festival, where director Bille August was nominated for the Golden Bear.

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What are critics saying?

75

ReelViews by James Berardinelli

It is involving and entertaining, and features an intriguing, independent heroine.

75

Chicago Sun-Times by Roger Ebert

Here is a movie so absorbing, so atmospheric, so suspenseful and so dumb, that it proves my point: The subject matter doesn't matter in a movie nearly as much as mood, tone and style.

70

The New York Times by Janet Maslin

This story has now been gracefully adapted by Bille August into a sleek, good-looking film that captures the book's peculiar fascination.

70

The New York Times by Elvis Mitchell

This story has now been gracefully adapted by Bille August into a sleek, good-looking film that captures the book's peculiar fascination.

63

The Globe and Mail (Toronto) by Rick Groen

Regresses into a lame action-thriller.

50

San Francisco Examiner by Barbara Shulgasser

This is the kind of story that might have been interesting had it not been populated with dreary characters played by actors who were clearly coached to be as dull as possible.

50

San Francisco Chronicle by Ruthe Stein

Vanessa Redgrave makes a regal if too-brief appearance.

50

Chicago Reader by Jonathan Rosenbaum

By the end Smilla has become a formulaic action hero--equally at home in an evening dress and blue jeans--not a marginalized victim seeking to uncover the source of her wound, and the film collapses around her like glaciers of melting ice.

40

Salon

It doesn't help that Julia Ormond -- perhaps the most un-Smilla-like actress walking the planet -- is cast in the starring role. She gives a competent performance, but she looks like Nancy Drew's pert-nosed cousin who somehow got trapped while sleuthing inside a snow globe, not the prickly, androgynous warrior Smilla is meant to be.

30

Washington Post by Desson Thomson

The suspense is laughably absent.

30

The A.V. Club

The matter-of-fact way in which the story is presented serves as a constant reminder of how implausible the whole thing is. Add to this the single expression Ormond and Byrne are allowed throughout the film, and you're left with one more weak, confusing, ignorable movie that embarrasses its source.