Her mother has died, and her entire world has been upended. What follows the car crash that changes everything for Ida (Sandra Guldberg Kampp) in Wildland is, in terms of the story’s structure, typical of the coming-of-age drama. The character’s perspective of the world is widened, and she learns a series of lessons about life, death, family, and everything in between. The difference between this film and most coming-of-age dramas, however, is that the world into which Ida is thrown is far from the suburban idyll of a palate-cleansing utopia. Indeed, her late mother’s extended family was a fully functioning criminal organization, whose matriarch puts on a façade of calm acceptance that hides a cold calculation.
The need to resettle one’s expectations for what is to come in director Jeanette Nordahl’s film gets us most of the way through the combative sense of inevitability in the story. We know that none of this will end well for the characters, even Bodil (Sidse Babett Knudsen), the matriarch of this crime family and Ida’s aunt, whose control of her own ongoing operation begins to slip immediately upon Ida’s arrival at her house. The girl’s social worker (Omar Shargawi) informs her that Bodil and her sons are desperate to take care of her after the tragedy befell her, but the truth comes out quite soon, for Ida and us. This is simply an initiation for Ida into the criminal underworld run by Bodil.
There are three other figures in Bodil’s operation – namely, her sons and Ida’s cousins. Jonas (Joachim Fjelstrup) is the designated driver and heir apparent. He’s also the lead enforcer of the group, such as in one chilling sequence that has him luring Ida into the trap of intimidating the daughter of a man whose revenue source is of tremendous importance. He speaks calmly, asking the girl about her school day and what she wants to be when she grows up, before giving her a package to be delivered to her father – and a message that he did the driving. It’s chilling, because it’s a way for Jonas to establish dominance. His wife Marie (Sofie Torp) and their child essentially exist in the background, except as a way of grounding her in this household.
That monstrously toxic drive translates to the man’s brothers. Mads (Besir Zeciri) sexually propositions the 17-year-old Ida right off the bat, then warns her against telling Bodil or the other men about the encounter. David (Elliott Crosset Hove), though, is the wild card, having taken up with Anna (Carla Philip Røder) against the wishes of his family. In another dominant act, Jonas smacks his brother playfully across the face as a way of preparing him for the missions Bodil sends them on, and one can palpably feel David fighting the urge to smack Jonas with a lot less playfulness. This is a fundamentally broken household, but it is also a tightknit operation.
That makes Ida’s intrusion upon the operation’s integrity so alarming to everyone in the household, and it leads to decisions that, in a lesser screenplay than the one written by Ingeborg Topsøe, could be discounted as frankly stupid ones. The apex of this must be the return to the man and his schoolgirl daughter, where a hilariously avoidable tragedy takes place and the police are suddenly alerted to the possibility of something amiss in Ida’s new living quarters.
Wildland hinges upon a decision of utter foolishness, but Topsøe and Nordahl are smart about ratcheting the tension – not to be a thriller or an action picture, but to say something about this tenuous family unit. It’s in the performances (Kampp’s inquisitive stoicism, Knudsen’s welcome iciness, Fjelstrup’s terrifyingly empty eyes) and the conclusion, which provides the bleakest outcome for just about everyone.
Photo courtesy of Film Movement
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