Insomnia

For half the year it never gets dark in Norway. Great for party animals and mountain bikers, but no midnight feast for those who need their shut-eye, like Jonas Engstrom (Stellan Skarsgård) a Swedish detective, sent to Oslo to help solve the brutal killing of a student.

What gives Erik Skjoldbjærg's debut such an impact is the whiteness of the light and the darkness of the soul. Engstrom is not a forthcoming man, compared to Erik Vik (Sverre Anker Ousdal), his assistant, a charmer of the old school, and sleep deprivation causes him to make fatal mistakes, arriving at a state of paranoia that brings him closer to the murderer in thought and deed.

The whodunit element becomes less important as Engstrom's mental state appears more fractious by the minute. A repressed, controlled man, with a sense of humour equivalent to stressed concrete, he struggles with a fear, blacker than the night that never comes. Skarsgård (Breaking The Waves, Ronin) has the intelligence and authority to play this role, as if he slept in his clothes, which he didn't, because the damned light won't switch off. As an actor, he is contained. Skjoldbjærg stretches him to a point where emotions break out. Like pus from a boil.