Naurun varjolla / Laughing Matters

Reetta Aalto: Naurun varjolla / Laughing Matters (FI 2020) starring Joonas Saartamo (Tommi) and Elena Leeve (Maria).

Reetta Aalto: Naurun varjolla / Laughing Matters (FI 2020) starring Aino Sirje as Kira.

På skämt.
    FI 2020. PC: Zodiak Finland Oy. P: Sari Lempiäinen.
    D: Reetta Aalto. SC: Anna Ruohonen. Cin: Jarkko M. Virtanen. AD: Sasu Joutsi. Cost: Ninni Lahtinen. Makeup: Hanna Ilkko. M: Artturi Taira, Samuli Kukkola. S: Pinja Mustajoki. ED: Hanna Kuirinlahti.
    C: Elena Leeve (Maria), Joonas Saartamo (Tommi), Aino Sirje (Kira), Ernest Lawson (Karri), Minna Kivelä (Riitta), Heikki Silvennoinen (Kale), Satu Tuuli Karhu (Laura), Miika Laakso.
    Loc: Tampere, Hämeenlinna, Turku, Forssa.
    88 min
    Premiere: 20 Nov 2020 – released by Oy Nordisk Film Ab.
    Corona emergency security: 25% capacity, face masks, distancing, hand hygiene.
    Viewed at Tennispalatsi 3, Helsinki, 20 Nov 2020.

AA: Laughing Matters is the debut feature film of Reetta Aalto, who has attracted attention with a string of short films such as Marja-Sisko (a documentary about a priest who came out as transgender) and Bittersweet (a sensitive drama about the friendship of two teenage girls). Pussy for Beginners, a funny animated "instruction manual" about the atavistic topic, won the Domestic Award at the Animatricks Festival. Boudoir / The Bedroom was a drama about "when no means no" in the feminist portmanteau project One-Off Incident / A Force of Habit.

Stand-up comedy, called by that English term, started to gain popularity in Finland in the 1990s, but there had been an indigenous tradition since forever, popular in soirées (iltamat), during wartime, and also in the early cinema period when short films alternated with programme numbers, including comedy skits. Among film culture personalities, Peter von Bagh as an emcee had a talent for stand-up, but laughter for him was not an end in itself.

Stand up has emerged into the forefront of attention in recent high profile films such as Joker last year, and in Laughing Matters it becomes a subject for a multi-layered reflection. There is a stand up class, and a rookie stand-up tour is mounted to test new talent.

The tension is enormous. No form of performance is as merciless as comedy. If you fail, you are likely to fail utterly. We learn that main driving forces of stand-up comedy include humiliation and self-revelation. It's a contradictory and paradoxical art.

The four members of the stand-up tour each offer caricatures of identity politics. There is a Black comedian (Ernest Lawson as Karri), a non-binary performer (Aino Sirje as Kira), a male chauvinist (Joonas Saartamo as Tommi) and a feminist intellectual (Elena Leeve as Maria).

The main conflict is between Tommi and Maria. Tommi's routine is a jaw-droppingly reactionary misogynist rant where the punchlines are true knock-outs against wives and mothers-in-law.

Tommi elicits laughter, disturbingly not because of fun but because of hate. This is something so existential that I am reminded of Jules Feiffer's remarks around Carnal Knowledge, for him "a picture of men's hatred of women", expressing his view that "all heterosexual men hate women", or at least that this was the case during the sexual revolution.

Maria is so stunned and stupefied by Tommi's poisonous and bilious rant that she feels physically ill. Gandhi's motto "be the change that you wish to see in the world" is evoked in the movie, but Maria turns into Gandhi II, no more Ms. Passive Resistance, not winning Tommi with love but demolishing him with his own weapons, and, using feminine wile, stinging him to the quick.

The stand-up contest turns into a battle of the sexes, and although there is an attempt to transform the narrative into a romantic comedy, instead it proceeds from misogyny and misandry into misanthropy, as far as Tommi and Maria are concerned.

Karri and Kira appear as centers of sanity. I don't immediately recall another so memorable a non-binary character in Finnish cinema as Aino Sirje's interpretation as Kira. Although Kira's role is underwritten, there is a quiet and compelling presence that elevates the whole movie and becomes a promise of exciting things to come.

PS. Reportedly there is an impressive non-binary character also in Hannaleena Hauru's Fucking With Nobody, seen at Venice Film Festival, but its Finnish premiere has been postponed into 2021.

PS 2. Thinking about Finnish talent in bringing non-binary characters to the screen we may also remember Susanna Salonen's Patong Girl (2014) and Stina Ekblad's interpretation of Ismael in Ingmar Bergman's Fanny and Alexander (1982) in a sequence that was for Robin Wood the final key moment in Bergman's oeuvre.

PS 3. I confess that I am out of my depth in discussing gender diversity and intersex, and my command of the vocabulary leaves a lot to be desired. There is a Finnish online vocabulary updated 22 December 2020 on the SETA website.

BEYOND THE JUMP BREAK:

BEYOND THE JUMP BREAK:

NAURUN VARJOLLA
ALOITTELEVAT STAND UP -KOOMIKOT LÄHTEVÄT KIERTUEELLE

Työnimellä NAURUN VARJOLLA kulkevan, stand up –komiikan maailmaan sijoittuvan draamakomedian pääosarooleissa nähdään Elena Leeve, Joonas Saartamo, Ernest Lawson ja Aino Sirje. Elokuvan ohjaa Reetta Aalto ja sen on käsikirjoittanut Anna Ruohonen.

Työttömäksi jäänyt, Tampereella asuva ja elämässään hieman hukassa oleva Maria (Elena Leeve) osallistuu stand up -kurssille, ja päätyy aloittelevien koomikoiden kilpailukiertueelle. Seuranaan kiertueella Marialla on pieni, mutta keskenään erilaista komiikkaa tekevä joukko koomikoita (Saartamo, Lawson ja Sirje). Yhteinen kiertue sujuu sekalaisesti eivätkä ihmissuhteetkaan osoittaudu aivan yksinkertaisiksi. Kun kiertue ja kilpailu saa päätöksensä, ei Mariakaan ole enää entisensä.

Modernin komediaelokuvan ohjaa Reetta Aalto, helsinkiläinen elokuvaohjaaja, käsikirjoittaja ja kirjailija, joka tekee sekä fiktio- että dokumenttielokuvia. Aalto on Jussi-ehdokkaana parhaasta ohjauksesta osana Tottumiskysymys-episodielokuvaa, ja hänen esikoisromaaninsa Vadim julkaistiin kesäkuun alussa.

Käsikirjoittaja on lukuisten komediasarjojen takaa löytyvä Anna Ruohonen, joka harrastaa stand upia ja on tehnyt noin 70 keikkaa eri puolilla Suomea.

Tapahtumat sijoittuvat Tampereen lisäksi myös mm. Turkuun ja Forssaan.