A wan, unconvincing coming-of-age story in a stunning remote setting, “The Sunlit Night” comes to streaming services at least twice watered down. Screenwriter Rebecca Dinerstein adapted her own novel — which, honestly, hardly ever works out — and what was a nearly two-hour movie at this year’s Sundance film Festival now barely clears 80 minutes. It’s impossible to say what got lost on the way but certainly nothing new was found.
What makes the film worth considering is lead Jenny Slate and the location shooting in Norway’s Lofoten archipelago, a gasp-inducing theater of mountain, sea, and light 160 kilometers above the Arctic Circle. It’s there that Slate’s character, a flailing New York City artist named Fran, has fled for a summer job assisting a dour Norwegian painter on his latest art project. Slate has a dual career as a stand-up comedian, saying amusingly rude things in a baby voice, and as an actress in indie movies like this one, only better. (“Obvious Child,” 2014, is the best.) Beneath her self-effacing mannerisms, she has a rueful, empathetic poise that provides its own sort of tension.
“The Sunlit Night” could badly use some. Fran’s home life is awful: She shares a cramped apartment with a sister (Elise Kibler), a depressive mother (Jessica Hecht), and an angry nudnik of a father (David Paymer). Then she travels to Lofoten and starts working for Nils (Fridtjov Såheim), helping the grumpy older man to paint a rural barn a glowing yellow inside and out. The film’s tone is awkwardly comic, Fran adjusting with difficulty to the land of the midnight sun — she sleeps in a trailer with thin curtains — and getting to know the quirky locals, including a baby goat who likes to share her bed.
Director David Wnendt is a German filmmaker whose previous work — including “Look Who’s Back” (2015), about Hitler waking up in the modern day — pushes buttons with daring. Not so here. Wnendt and cinematographer Martin Ahlgren ably capture the natural beauty of their remote setting, but never find anything dramatically compelling to put there. The supporting cast is starry and remarkably under-used: Zach Galifianakis as a fellow American working at a Viking village tourist attraction, Gillian Anderson as the Russian widow of a man whose last wishes were to have a full-scale Viking funeral, burning boat and all.
The dead man’s son, Yascha (Alex Sharp), is a mopey young man who drifts into a sort-of romance with the heroine, who, meanwhile, is starting to find her own painterly voice. Taken as a whole, “The Sunlit Night” is fey and inconclusive, and whether something of more substance got cut in the post-Sundance re-edit or was never there to begin with is at this point moot. The movie’s up a most beautiful creek without a paddle.
★½
THE SUNLIT NIGHT
Directed by David Wnendt. Written by Rebecca Dinerstein Knight, based on her novel. Starring Jenny Slate, Alex Sharp, Fridtjov Såheim. Available on cable systems and streaming platforms. 82 minutes. Unrated (as PG-13: language, brief nudity, sexual situations).