Does globalization mean that all slackers slack equally? Perhaps--if they all have access to iMacs and trip-hop. But I would suggest that geography plays a bigger role in the trajectory of the creeping-toward-30 crowd than the gloss of pop culture would have you believe.

Think back to the eponymous movie that began the movement (absolutely the wrong word for such a stasis-oriented generation): in Richard Linklater's sun-drenched Austin, where just hanging out on the street resulted in the kind of random encounter that made a life of leisure worthwhile. The town itself was a crucial locus.

And now, in Baltasar Kormákur's 101 Reykjavík, we have a little window into what it takes to postpone real life in the far north. At its center is Hlynur (Hilmir Snær Gudnason) who, when he's not marching out onto a snow-covered mountain to make the most passive suicide attempt ever (and he's not very good at it), keeps things mellow. He lives with his mother (who, apparently unaware of Oedipal implications, hands him his underwear as he steps from his bath), sleeps until noon, jerks off to exercise videos, takes steamy baths, and heads out to packed dance clubs to pick up girls. None of this brings him any pleasure ("Life is a break from death," he says), and he sees no change for himself up ahead: When asked what he wants to do with himself, he replies, "the nothing kind of nothing," without any irony intended.

Into this cold climate blows the irresistible Lola (Pedro Almodóvar perennial Victoria Abril), who has an arsenal of Latina warmth to heat things up. What follows her is a talk-show litany of issues guaranteed to unnerve the most unrepentant slacker: pregnancy, lesbianism, sex, death, and rebirth.

This is not the deepest film ever made, but it offers many pleasures--not the least of which is Gudnason, who lurks handsomely behind his specs like Clark Kent. Hlynur is cruel, catty, casually xenophobic, and almost completely unlikable, but Gudnason keeps him teetering on the edge of consciousness, a cold heart ready to head south.