Gabriel Byrne, Richard Harris, Julia Ormond, Tom Wilkinson, Ono Fleischer, Agga Olsen - Dir:Billie August Based on the best-selling novel, this gripping, suspenseful thriller is about a headstrong woman who uses her uncanny knowledge of ice and snow to unravel a taut web of lies and intrigue. When her six-year old neighbor falls from a snow-covered roof, Smilla suspects the boy's death was no accident. Together with a mysterious lover, who holds secrets of his own, she defies local authorities and begins a dangerous game of cat-and-mouse in an effort to uncover the truth.
Smilla, a beautiful but curmudgeonly half-Inuit glaciologist, applies her uncanny understanding of the properties of snow to the fastidious investigation of the murder of an Inuit boy in Copenhagen. The trail leads to the frozen wastelands of coastal Greenland, where Smilla braves the perilous landscape and unearths a tangled web of corporate corruption.
Present-day Copenhagen. Six-year-old Greenlander Isaiah falls from an apartment-building roof. The police claim it was an accident. But Smilla Jasperson (Julia Ormond) knows Isaiah was afraid of heights. She is an expert in snow and, after examining his tracks, is sure Isaiah was terrified when he ran off the roof.
The heroine of Peter Høeg's novel SMILLA'S SENSE OF SNOW is a unique creation--half Greenlander, always an outsider, she is spiky, determined, and brilliant. In Bille August's movie, the beautiful Ormond conveys Smilla's intelligence and hostility as, full of suspicion and resentment, she investigates. She questions police and medical experts, discovering a muscle sample was taken from Isaiah's leg after he died. She ferrets out officials of the mining company where Isaiah's father worked before dying on a secret expedition. She learns from Elsa Lübing (Vanessa Redgrave) that the company keeps two sets of files. And she discovers there are those who want her investigation to stop. Sometimes helped, sometimes hindered by the mysterious Mechanic (Gabriel Byrne), Smilla pursues the riddle of Isaiah's death.
Theatrical release: February 28, 1997.
Filmed on location in Greenland; in Kiruna, Sweden; and in Copenhagen, Denmark.
Smilla's Sense Of Snow Reviews:
"...A key pleasure in this combo mystery/sci-fi drama/character study from Peter Hoeg's novel is trying to guess where it's going..." -- 3 out of 4 stars
-- Mike Clark, USA Today
"...Vanessa Redgrave makes another scene-stealing appearance....It's good enough to melt snow..."
-- Janet Maslin, New York Times
"...A superbly made film..."
-- Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times
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