Noomi Rapace returns to her Icelandic roots for ‘Lamb’
AUSTIN — Swedish actress Noomi Rapace is used to going from one extreme to another.
“I was shooting a movie in New Orleans and wrapped on a Saturday morning. On Monday, I was on location in Iceland waiting to deliver baby lambs,” says Rapace, 41, recently while at Austin’s Fantastic Fest film festival to promote the disturbing thriller “Lamb,” opening Oct. 8 in theaters. “When they are born, it’s magical, you see the creature trying to walk, drinking milk, getting its soul.”
“Lamb,” directed by Valdimar Jóhannsson and set on a small farm in Iceland, is being acclaimed for how it juxtaposes the essence of what could be a documentary about a taciturn rural couple against elements of fantasy, horror and a trippy take on Scandinavian folklore. And, true to its title, a very special lamb is at the heart of the story about a rural couple — played by Rapace and Hilmar Snaer Gundarson — who are looking to recover from losing a child and believe they may have found the answer to their prayers in a very special animal.
For Rapace, it was a return to roots, of sorts. Though she’s Swedish, she spent much of her youth in Iceland and speaks fluent Icelandic.
“When I was 7, I appeared in a crazy Icelandic Viking film, that’s how it started,” she says referencing 1987’s “In the Shadow of the Raven,” the second in a trilogy of popular Norse warrior films. “I was waiting for someone like (‘Lamb’ director) Vald to come along, to reconnect me with my roots. When I first read the script, something just pulled me in.”
She says the quiet fortitude of the couple in “Lamb” is a reflection of life in the small island country.
“In Iceland, the people have a different relation to the land. My grandmother used to tell me not to go over a certain hill but to go around so as not to summon the wrath of the fairies and trolls,” Rapace remembers. “This film reminded me of who I am. My grandmother never talked much. The farmers, especially, they don’t talk, they have their routines. There aren’t a lot of words. They show in actions that they love you, but they don’t say it out loud.”
The sheep birthing scenes were especially fraught.
“You can’t prepare,” she says. “The farmer was standing next to the camera in case something went wrong. He was ready to jump in, but I felt like I knew how to do it. The smell stayed on my body and on my hands for so long. For days and weeks it didn’t wash off. Really, I can still remember it, and it defines that whole summer.”
While Rapace may have been shaped by Scandinavia — indeed, her breakthrough role was as Lisbeth Salander in the original Swedish version of “The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo” and its two sequels — she’s very much at home making Hollywood movies these days. She has appeared in “Prometheus” and “Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan” among other productions.
In fact, she speaks English with little trace of accent, something she worked on after the global success of “Tattoo.” “When I decide to do something, I have good focus,” says the actress who also speaks Danish and Norwegian. “I was shooting a movie in Oslo and I just starting watching television talk shows and movies without subtitles.”