Baby Jane

Katja Gauriloff: Baby Jane. Roosa Söderholm as Jonna aka Baby Jane.

FI 2019. PC: Oktober Oy. P: Satu Majava, Joonas Berghäll. EX: Sofi Oksanen, Tor Jonasson.
    D: Katja Gauriloff. SC: Veera Tyhtilä, Katja Gauriloff – based on the novel by Sofi Oksanen (2005). DP: Heikki Färm. AD: Sattva-Hanna Toiviainen. Cost: Tiina Wilén. Makeup: Marjut Samulin. M: Salla Luhtala. ED: Hanna Kuirinlahti. S: Olli Huhtanen.
    C: Roosa Söderholm (Jonna), Maria Ylipää (Piki), Nelly Kärkkäinen (Bossa), Lauri Tilkanen (Joonatan), Niko Saarela (Eero), Peter Pihlström (Kari), Niina Hosiasluoma (Stuba).
    Loc: Helsinki (around the Sörnäisten Kurvi area).
    90 min.
    Premiere: 8 March 2019 – distributed by Future Film Oy.
    Vimeo link viewed for Jussi Awards, on a 4K tv screen at home, 10 March 2020.

Official synopsis: "Jonna (Roosa Söderholm), a small town girl enters Helsinki for study and excitement. With innocent glee Jonna engages in the throb of the city until one dangerous night she finds herself in a threatening situation. Emerges a saviour: Piki (Maria Ylipää), a wonderful woman whose self-assured manner bewitches Jonna. Jonna worships her saviour, Piki ties her rope around her, and a passionate love affair starts".

AA: Baby Jane, based on a novel by Sofi Oksanen, is the first fiction film of Katja Gauriloff. However, Gauriloff's masterpiece, Kaisa's Enchanted Forest, already forayed deep beyond documentary reality. Its documentary aspects were stranger than fiction, but it also grew into a shaman experience of ancient Sami pantheism, the visionary (the truest) dimension of the tale conveyed via animation.

Baby Jane is a variation of the classical "bright lights, big city / went to my baby's head" tale. A small town girl (Roosa Söderholm) gets drawn into the vortex of Helsinki partying and a maelstrom of sexual identity. She has been following the heterosexual trail, but a fascinating queen of the night, Piki (Maria Ylipää) awakens her passion to love between women.

Piki seems the quintessence of cool, but gradually it turns out that in many ways she is the more vulnerable of the two, her despair covered under an almost impenetrable mask.

Baby Jane could have become a superficial story about a certain scene in Helsinki, but its approach to mental health issues and self-destructive behaviour is sincere, illuminating and deeply felt.

It's a stark story, eloquently photographed by Heikki Färm and powerfully interpreted by the leading actresses. The two contrasting worlds of Piki and Baby Jane are given totally different visual expressions.