Bleat Child Of Mine

In Icelandic folk horror Lamb, a couple adopt a most unusual daughter…

EVER BEEN INVITED round to see a friend’s new-born and, confronted by a scowling potato, struggled to coo, “Why, they’re beautiful!” Such social anxiety is nothing compared to the chap in Icelandic film Lamb who visits his brother and sister-in-law, and finds them mooning over a daughter with a human body, but the head of a sheep. Awkward.

Ada is the name of this surreal biological cut-and-shut, inexplicably birthed by a ewe and then lovingly reared as if it were their own offspring by farming couple Maria (Noomi Rapace) and Ingvar (Hilmir Snær Guðnason).

Philosophically speaking, however, her parents are first-time director Valdimar Jóhannsson and his co-writer: poet, novelist and erstwhile Björk collaborator Sjón.

“I started making a reference book with paintings, drawings and photos, trying to come up with some mood or story,” Jóhannsson tells Red Alert, recalling the origins of this offbeat modern fairy tale. “My producers introduced me to Sjón and I showed him this book, and he liked it. I knew that it should be a film about sheep farmers, and Ada was there – I’d done a lot of drawings of her. Then we started creating the story together.”