Film Shapes

This film, screening at the Nordic Film Festival , is a slightly slapstick telling of the attempted coup in Finland in 1930, where ex-President Kaarlo Ståhlberg and his wife were kidnapped and driven across the country by the right wing fascist Lapua Movement. It's tied together by a best on ground performance from the Finnish Glenn McGrath, Jussi Vatanen (it's astonishing how much this guy looks like Pidge - scroll to the bottom and decide yourself). He plays Eero Kuussaari, a colonel desperate for respect and promotion. This frustration and feeling of inferiority drives him to drunkenly order a young crew of right-wing activists to kidnap Stahlberg (Pertti Sveholm) from his country home. They don't bargain on Mrs. Stahlberg (Riitta Havukainen) insisting on joining them.  Director Samuli Valkama has made a clever little historical comedy drama with current reverberations, considering Finland's place as a potential bulwark to Russia in Europe. The events of this film ta...

Aki Kaurismäki's latest film is an oddly affecting story of two ordinary people looking for something. I say ordinary but nothing in Kaurismäki's world is quite that, more like ordinary-adjacent, everything is a touch askew. Ansa (Alma Pöysti) lives alone and has a shite job in a supermarket. Holappa (Jussi Vatanen) lives in what looks like a shipping container. He's also a secret alcoholic who works on a building site, AND he's the spitting image of Ooh-Ahh Glenn McGrath. These two lonely folk meet one night, barely, at a depressing karaoke night run by a local pub. The rest of the film is pretty much the two of them meeting, or failing to meet one another. This sounds dull but there's something about Kaurismäki's style that allows the viewer's face to maintain a wry grin throughout. He's the deadest of pans, the straightest of bats, the most functional of directors. For example, Ansa sees an internet ad for a job at a bar. Cut to the sign of said bar t...

This debut feature from Finnish writer/director, Hanna Bergholm is almost perfectly pitched. It's about a young girl, Tinja, played by Siiri Solalinna (also, amazingly, her screen debut), who is struggling to live up to her mother's exacting expectations. Mother, Äiti, played by Sophia Heikkilä, wants her daughter to win the school gymnastics competition and show the world through her 'lifestyle' vlogs what a great family they are. Rounding out this family are downtrodden husband, Isä (Jani Volanen) and irritating son, Matias (Oiva Ollila), though they all seem to be only mildly on board with the whole social media enterprise.  At the beginning of the film, a panicky blackbird gets trapped in the living room of the family house and smashes up the place. After catching it, Tinja asks if she can release it outside. Mother, instead, snaps its neck and tells Tinja to dispose of it. Later that night, Tinja is awoken by a shrill squawking and upon searching the creepy forest ...

I saw this preview for the Perth Festival at The Backlot a few nights ago. It's a low-key 'love story', devoid of any of the usual romantic cliches that you'd expect to find in a film with this outline. Finnish student Laura, played by Seidi Haarla, is first seen trying to navigate a party full of wankers at her girlfriend's apartment in Moscow. She doesn't fit in here and it's some relief to know that she's soon off on a train trip north to Murmansk to see some petroglyphs (ancient rock drawings). In fact, this was a trip planned by her carefree (and could care less) girlfriend, Irina, who cancels at the last minute. This is where the journey - and the JOURNEY - begins. Laura's compartment (No. 6) is shared with a moody Russian skinhead called Ljoha, played by Yuriy Borisov. He doesn't take long to get pissed up and obstreperous, lecturing her on the superiority of Mother Russia and asking if she's going to Murmansk to 'sell her cunt...