Ikuiseen rauhaan

Ville Suhonen: Ikuiseen rauhaan (FI 2021), the story of Arndt Pekurinen (1905–1941), the Finnish pacifist and conscientious objector.

FI © 2021 Oktober. P: Joonas Berghäll, Satu Majava.
    D+SC: Ville Suhonen. DP: Marita Hällfors, Juice Huhtala. Cost: Riitta Röpelinen. Set dec: Ella Brigatti, Olli Uosukainen. VFX: Veikko VFX-taiteilija. M: Lau Nau. S: Pietari Koskinen. ED: Antti Tuomikoski.
    A non-fiction portrait of Arndt Pekurinen (1905–1941), the Finnish pacifist and conscientious objector. Based on archival documents, voiced testimonies and associative re-enactments.
    Archive editor: Sanna Liinamaa. Archives: Säde Pekurinen Collection, Olga Pekurinen Collection, Erno Paasilinna Archives, etc.
    Soundtrack selections:
– "Sun haltuus rakas isäni" / "Nimm von uns Du treuer Gott" (EG 146) (comp. in France 1543, Nicolaus Selnecker 1578, Martin Moller 1587). Virsikirja, hymn 377.
– "The March of the Finnish Cavalry in the Thirty Years' War" (1618–1648), trad.
– "Matalasta torpasta", trad., perf. Otto Pyykkönen (1925).
– "Aavikon lapsia", comp. Lauri Lieppo, lyr. Martti Jäppilä, perf. Veli Lehto and Dallapé Orchestra.
– "Havis Amanda", trad., perf. Aarne Salonen and Dallapé Orchestra (1929).
– "Vöyrin marssi", n.c., a march of the White Guard in the Finnish Civil War (1918).
– "Naurupolkka", trad., perf. Dallapé Orchestra (1930).
    Voice talent: Joonas Saartamo (Arndt Pekurinen), Vilma Melasniemi (Aleksandra Pekurinen), Elena Leeve (Säde Pekurinen). Olavi Uusivirta, Lauri Tilkanen, Hannu-Pekka Björkman, Taisto Oksanen, Olli Uosukainen, Nicklas Wancke, Arnd Dewald.
    Premiere: 9 July 2021, distributor: Pirkanmaan Elokuvakeskus.
    Helsinki corona emergency security: 2 meters distancing, face masks, hand hygiene.
    Pirkanmaan Elokuvakeskus press screening at Finnkino Tennispalatsi 2, Helsinki, 23 June 2021 at 10 am.

The title of the film stems from Immanuel Kant's (1724–1804) prophetic book Zum ewigen Frieden (1795, [literally: Eternal Peace]), translated into English as Perpetual Peace and Finnish by Jaakko Tuomikoski as Ikuiseen rauhaan in 1922. By the time Kant wrote it he had already completed his magnus opus philosophical studies. It is a work of Enlightenment by a citizen of the world who offered a vision of united nations. But soon enough there was a turn to Romanticism, Nationalism, and the Holy Alliance. 150 years later, the Charter of the United Nations (1945) was influenced by Kant.

" Blessed are the peacemakers ".
– The motto in Arndt Pekurinen's death notice ("Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God", from the Beatitudes in the Sermon on the Mount, Matthew 5:9)

" Sä elät sittenkin, Arndt ".
– "And yet you live, Arndt". His epitaph.

AA: In Ikuiseen rauhaan, Ville Suhonen continues his exploration into the Finnish history during the First Republic (1919–1944) in feature-length non-fiction films. In Jäämarssi / Frozen Hell (2011) the subject was Russian prisoners of war in Finland in 1941–42, in Ompelijatar / Seamstress (2015), the Finnish Communist Martta Koskinen who was sentenced to death for high treason in 1943, the last woman executed in Finland.

Ikuiseen rauhaan is a non-fiction portrait of Arndt Pekurinen (1905–1941), the Finnish pacifist and conscientious objector, based on archival documents, voiced testimonies and associative re-enactments.

Pekurinen became a figure of considerable national and international importance. In 1931, "Lex Pekurinen" was passed to secure the rights of conscious objectors whose grounds were not religious. Pekurinen's brutal treatment and prolonged prison sentences in hard labour had attracted international attention of pacifists including Alfred Einstein and Bertrand Russell.

Pekurinen was also being harassed and tortured by the extreme right. The Lapua Movement, soon to be banned, had a firm hold among the clergy, the military, the police force and the prison personnel. Lex Pekurinen ceased to be valid during wartime, and in 1939–1941 Arndt's punishments restarted, until in 1941, on the frontline, Pekurinen, who refused to resist evil, was brutally disgraced, mutilated and executed.

Pekurinen refused to hate, instead relying on "hurtti huumori ja repäisevä meininki" ["a rip-roaring sense of humour and a rousing attitude"]. Because of the commitment of the church and the clergy to an authoritarian and repressive order since 1918, Pekurinen distanced himself from religion. But in essence his conviction was Christian. He came from a loving home, and his own family atmosphere was that of love, with no fighting, drinking or cursing.

Ville Suhonen and his team have conducted a thorough research of documents, an often difficult task, because Pekurinen's enemies burned his books, photographs and documents, but then again, we have the memoirs of his loved ones – and the files of the Finnish secret police, the Etsivä Keskuspoliisi. Their spies infiltrated pacifist organizations and attempted to destroy them from the inside, often successfully.

Inspired by examples like Leo Tolstoy, Mahatma Gandhi and the Finn Arvid Järnefelt, Finnish pacifists pursued a peaceful agenda of non-violent resistance to militarism. I have recently written an essay on Tolstoy and the cinema in which I discuss also the Tolstoyan example of civil disobedience, passive resistance and civil courage in the cinema, citing Richard Attenborough's Gandhi and movies about Martin Luther King and Nelson Mandela.

As the most recent example I mentioned Terrence Malick's powerful A Hidden Life, the story of the Austrian conscientious objector Franz Jägerstätter (1907–1943) with remarkable parallels with Arndt Pekurinen. For me, the most devastating one is the role of the Church, looking the other way when a martyr following the path of Christ is harassed and executed in front of their eyes.

Pekurinen faces his fate calmly. He consoles his family and advises his wife to educate their children so that they will be saved from further harassment and suffering. The perpetrators of the execution try to conceal the chain of command and responsibility and hide the corpse, but Aleksandra Pekurinen is adamant to have a proper burial. Examining the body she is also able to document the criminal way her husband had been treated. The law, including the martial law, was broken on several counts, and eyewitnesses lied blatantly in later investigations.

Pekurinen was disappointed that his fellow pacifists failed to follow his example and considered his sacrifice futile.

But his saga is one of a "victory in defeat". Dying for his conviction he became immortal.

BEYOND THE JUMP BREAK: PRESS COPY FROM THE FILMIKAMARI SITE:

The Father (2020)

Florian Zeller: The Father (GB/FR 2020) with Olivia Colman (daughter Anne) and Anthony Hopkins (father Anthony).

Isä
    GB/FR © 2020 New Zealand Trust Corporation as Trustee for Elarof. PC: F Comme Film / Trademark Films / Cine@. P: Simon Friend, Jean-Louis Livi, David Parfitt, Christophe Spadone.
    D: Florian Zeller. SC: Christopher Hampton, Florian Zeller – based on the play Le Père (2012) by Florian Zeller. DP: Ben Smithard – colour – 2.39:1 – AXS-R7 – source format: X-OCN ST (6K) – master format: 4K. PD: Peter Francis. AD: Amanda Dazely, Astrid Sieben. Set dec: Cathy Featherstone. Cost: Anna Robbins. Makeup and hair: Tahira Herold. VFX: Umedia. M: Ludovico Einaudi. S: Sandy Notarianni. ED: Yorgos Lamprinos.
    Soundtrack selections:
    – Henry Purcell: King Arthur, or The British Worthy (1691), Act 3: What Power Art Thou?, perf. Andreas Scholl, Accademia Bizantina, Stefano Montanari.
    – Vincenzo Bellini: Norma, Act 1: "Casta diva", perf. Maria Callas.
    – Georges Bizet: Les Pêcheurs de perles – Romance: "Je crois entendre encore", perf. Cyrille Dubois, L'Orchestre National de Lille, Alexandre Bloch.
    Cast (as edited in Wikipedia):
Anthony Hopkins as Anthony
Olivia Colman as Anne
Rufus Sewell as Paul
Imogen Poots as Laura / Lucy
Olivia Williams as Catherine / Laura / Anne (credited as The Woman)
Mark Gatiss as Bill / Paul (credited as The Man)
Ayesha Dharker as Dr. Sarai
Roman Zeller as Boy
    Loc: West Kensington, London, May 2019.
    Festival premiere: 27 Jan 2020 Sundance Film Festival.
    US premiere: 26 Feb 2021.
    Finnish premiere: 13 Aug 2021, released by Atlantic Film with Finnish / Swedish subtitles by Janne Kauppila / Heidi Nyblom Kuorikoski.
    Academy Awards 2021: Best Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role (Anthony Hopkins), Best Adapted Screenplay (Christopher Hampton, Florian Zeller).
    Helsinki corona emergency security: 2 meters distancing, face masks, hand hygiene.
    Atlantic Film press screening at Finnkino Tennispalatsi 2, Helsinki, 22 June 2021 at 10 am.

Previous film adaptation: Floride / Florida / Matkalla Floridaan (FR 2015, D: Philippe Le Guay, C: Jean Rochefort, Sandrine Kiberlain).

AA: Florian Zeller's The Father is an adaptation by Zeller and Christopher Hampton of Zeller's acclaimed play. In Finland it had its premiere at the Helsinki City Theatre in 2012 as Isä, starring Jari Pehkonen and Vuokko Hovatta.

As the source material is a chamber play taking place entirely indoors, it is remarkable how well the play has been transformed into cinema. It is a feat that can be compared with the best, such as Alf Sjöberg's legendary Miss Julie (1951).

Zeller's work has affinities with the the dream play. There is an original and ingenious double perspective: we observe the ageing Anthony as outsiders, but we also share his consciousness and delirious perceptions.

It is a story of universal interest and wisdom. The roles are reversed between father and child as the ageing Anthony slowly moves into his "second childhood".

The story of dementia is profoundly moving because the boundaries of sanity and dementia keep shifting, even within a single sentence. We can empathize and identify with Anthony who is losing his grip on the categories of time and space and has difficulties recognizing people.

This film is also about the philosophy of perception, the precariousness of existence and the increasing instability of memory. First Anthony fails to recognize his daughter Anne. Then he does not know where he is. From the question "What am I doing here?" he soon proceeds into: "Who exactly am I?"

In the startling finale Anthony is calling for his mother and states that he is "losing his leaves, the branches, the wind and the rain".

This story is also about the solace of music in advanced age. Anthony keeps enjoying his favourite opera arias, which bring a dimension of timeless grandeur to the tragedy.

In Finland we keep hearing stories about the parlous conditions in nursing homes. In this movie it is the other way around: the nurses are excellent professionals, and it is Anthony who is the monster.

This is a play for two great actors, and Anthony Hopkins and Olivia Colman lead the sterling cast brilliantly. They face the horror of dementia honestly, and they fill it with a sense of humour and compassion and a sense of something universal: this is a story about us all. Somehow I was thinking about Luis Buñuel's book of memoirs, Mon dernier soupir, which he starts by discussing his mother's dementia. When we lose our memory, we lose ourselves.

The production values are great. The production design subtly supports the dream mode: "I had to remember from the outset that one place had to serve as many places. We decided to gradually shift the colours and tone from golds, creams, yellows and brown towards blues", tells Peter Francis, the production designer.

The cinematography was conducted in 6K by Ben Smithard. The high technical quality has resulted into an unobtrusively subtle and sophisticated visual approach of the movie.

...

P.S. 14 Aug 2021  The Father revisited at Finnkino Strand 4, Lappeenranta, premiere weekend. The cinema was well attended. The corona restrictions are not severe today. This is a film of many surprises and revelations. On second viewing we know a bit more about what to expect, and the experience becomes more profound. The subtle interplay of the actors and the refined production design and cinematography can be even better appreciated on repeat viewings. The final sequence is now even more powerful in intensity. It belongs to the great endings in the movies.

P.S. 15 Aug 2021  I keep thinking about The Father in the morning after. The Father has a dimension of the horror film: the horror of losing one's identity. But also in another way, because Anthony is a monster. He treats everybody horribly. He has personal charm but is completely selfish and narcissistic. He wants everybody to love him, but does not love back. He has only negative things to say about his daughter Anne, and he treats his nurses terribly. They have the grandeur of spirit to overlook that. Anthony's wife is dead; also her Anthony discusses only in demeaning and belittling remarks. The only woman whom Anthony has loved is his mother, or his infant memory of her. Nobody can compare. He has never grown to love another completely, and the dementia reveals this emptiness nakedly. The subtext is the fear of death. Leo Tolstoy thought that the fear of death (as discussed in The Death of Ivan Ilyich) is fundamentally about the fear of the revelation that we have never learned to live.

Spy no tsuma / Wife of a Spy

Kiyoshi Kurosawa: スパイの妻 / Spy no tsuma / Wife of a Spy (JP 2020). In the middle Yu Aoi (Satoko Furuhara), to the right Issey Takahashi (Yusaku Fukuhara) and to the left Masahiro Higashide (Yasuharu Tsumori).

スパイの妻 / Les Amants sacrifiés .
    Japan, 2020
    Director: Kiyoshi Kurosawa
    Production: NHK (Keisuke Tsuchihashi), NHK Enterprises (Takashi Sawada), Incline (Satoshi Takada), C&I Entertainment (Tamon Kondo)
    Producer: Hideyuki Okamoto
    Main Cast: Yu Aoi, Issey Takahashi, Ryota Bando, Yuri Tsunematsu, Minosuke Hyunri, Masahiro Higashide, Takashi Sasano
    Screenplay: Ryusuke Hamaguchi, Tadashi Nohara, Kiyoshi Kurosawa
    Cinematographer: Tatsunosuke Sasaki – 8K Super Hi-Vision.
    Camera: Sharp 8C-B60A 8K, Zeiss Master Prime Lenses
    Grass Valley HQX Codec (4320p / 60 fps) (4:2:2 10bit)
    Cinematographic Process: 4:2:2 10bit (4320p / 60 fps) (source format)
    Digital Intermediate (2K / 24 fps) (master format) (DCP version)
    Digital Intermediate (4320p / 60 fps) (master format) (TV broadcast version)
    Editor: Hidemi Lee
    Production Designer: Norifumi Ataka
    Costume Designer: Haruki Koketsu
    Music: Ryosuke Nagaoka
    Sound: Keita Yoshino
    Visual Effects: Shuji Asano
    Lighting: Nakaya Kimura
    Film clip: Sadao Yamanaka: 河内山宗俊 / Kochiyama soshun / Priest of Darkness (JP 1936).
    Copy: Nikkatsu
    Languages: Japanese, English
    Subtitles: English
    115 min
    Category: Gems of New Cinema
    Midnight Sun Film Festival (MSFF) online.
    Viewed on a laptop in Helsinki, 21 June 2021

Olaf Möller (MSFF 2021): " Wife of a Spy is an aesthetically truly unique project – whose true shape so far almost nobody outside Japan had a chance to see. Originally produced for NHK’s BS8K satellite channel, the film was shot as a slightly experimental endeavor in UHDTV which means: the images have an almost unreal sharpness – Kurosawa Kiyoshi shows a world brutally devoid of any mystery, and so present that past and future feel illusory."

"The cinema-version was mellowed down to 2K, color-graded more warmly and given a different aspect ratio which all lends it a breezier air making it feel a bit closer to the cinema it alluded to and riffs about. And all that for a story centered on a film shot on 9.5 mm, an amateur format developed by Pathé that was popular in Japan during the 30s and 40s!"

"Here, it is used for a delightful short about a cat burglar as well as a clandestinely shot documentary of Japanese atrocities in occupied Manchuria. Both are made by an import-export entrepreneur from Kōbe whose true game we’ll never understand fully, and neither will his wife whom he uses, and neither will an old friend who’s now serving with the kempeitai (= Secret Police)… Rarely did cloak and dagger look more elegant and refined, but also melancholic and wistful!"

"They don’t make the likes of Kurosawa Kiyoshi anymore, at least outside Japan: an auteur who really worked his way up through cinema’s production ranks. He started out with amateur films; did get his professional training with pink eiga (Kandagawa inran sensō, 1983); could direct his first general release feature (Sweet Home, 1986); honed his craft with V-cinema delights (Katte ni shiyagare! [6 episodes], 1995/96; Door 3, 1996); specialized in horror with a meta bend (Cure, 1997; Charisma, 1999); diversified into other genres (Ningen gōkaku, 1998; Tōkyō Sonata, 2008) while continuing to explore all facets of the fantastique (Kairo, 2001; Kishibe no tabi, 2015), Science Fiction included (Sanpo suru shinryakusha, 2017); does occasionally TV (Shokuzai [Miniseries], 2012). A humble genius who works and creates incessantly. " (Olaf Möller)

SYNOPSIS (Venice Film Festival 2020):

" The year is 1940 in Kobe, the night before the outbreak of World War II. Local merchant, Yusaku Fukuhara, senses that things are headed in an unsettling direction. He leaves his wife Satoko behind and travels to Manchuria. There, he coincidentally witnesses a barbarous act and is determined to bring it to light. He leaps into action. Meanwhile, Satoko is called on by her childhood friend and military policeman, Taiji Tsumori. He tells her that a woman her husband brought back from Manchuria has died. Satoko is torn by jealousy and confronts Yusaku. But when she discovers Yusaku’s true intentions, she does the unthinkable to ensure his safety and their happiness. "

DIRECTOR'S STATEMENT (Venice Film Festival 2020):

" Set in a city in Japan’s rural countryside during the anxious and terrifying times of war, this film depicts a couple’s struggle to overcome distrust and stay faithful to their love for each other. This is my first film that is set in the olden times. With the historical timeline and events of the society already fixed, I pondered with great interest as I imagined how conflicted the people must have felt when they thought of what to look forward to in their future. "

AA: Kiyoshi Kurosawa's Wife of a Spy is an original political thriller set on the eve of the Pacific War.

There are affinities with Jean-Pierre Melville's Resistance trilogy. The presence of a brutal militaristic and imperialistic government is overwhelming. An atmosphere of surveillance prevails. Appearances must be kept. You cannot trust anyone. Personal ties are broken.

Key conflicts are between love and duty and between fatherland and justice. Satoko initially accuses her husband Yusako of treason. "I'm a cosmopolitan", he replies. "I will not tolerate injustice". "I will become the wife of a spy", says Satoko. But Yusako is not a spy: "You did not see what I saw. A heinous act in a foreign country".

Brutality is conveyed via indirection. Torture scenes take place in the darkness. Cries of agony betray what is going on. The victim's torn teeth document the method.

The "film within the film" theme is introduced via a screening of Sadao Yamanaka's entertainment movie Priest of Darkness (1936), a late silent film sonorized via a catchy, escapist song.

The second film screening is a clandestine 9,5 mm documentation from occupied Manchuria. It is a "smoking gun" of atrocities: Nazi-style experiments are conducted to spread Black Death in biological warfare. Little is shown even here, but what we see is incriminating. Like Kaji (Tatsuya Nakadai) in Masaki Kobayashi's The Human Condition, Yusako refuses to ignore a massive war crime.

There is a thrilling finale with surprises. The film ends in 1945. Again, horrors are conveyed indirectly. The apocalyptic sounds of the world war in the darkness, the trembling tableware, the flares, the screams. Satoko cries alone on the deserted beach. Yusaku has been confirmed dead, but a note of ambiguity remains.

Viewed on a laptop screen, the experience of the movie originally shot on 8K Super HiVision is not what it was meant to be. But even so I was able to appreciate the subtle soft detail. In this presentation there is no unreal sharpness but an appealing painterly quality.

Fucking with Nobody

Hannaleena Hauru: Fucking with Nobody (FI 2021) starring Hannaleena Hauru (Hanna) and Samuel Kujala (Ekku).

Fucking with Nobody / Fucking with Nobody.
    FI 2021 © 2020 Elokuvayhtiö Oy Aamu. P: Emilia Haukka, Jussi Rantamäki.
    D: Hannaleena Hauru. SC: Hannaleena Hauru, Lasse Poser. Cin: Lasse Poser, Jan-Niclas Jansson – colour – 2.39:1 – release format: 2K. Set design: Jenny Jauhiainen. Cost: Aino Havu. Makeup: Nora Pippingsköld. VFX: Miika Puustinen.
    Soundtrack selections: Universal Music stock music. End credit song: “Kuin pieni tyhmä” (Finnish lyrics Juha Vainio, perf. Jarkko & Laura, 1967) (“Somethin' Stupid”, C. Carson Parks, 1966).
    S: Karri Niinivaara – 5.1. ED: Hannaleena Hauru.
    C: Hannaleena Hauru (Hanna), Lasse Poser (Lasse), Samuel Kujala (Ekku), Pietu Wikström (Ara), Sara Melleri (Viima), Hanna-Kaisa Tiainen (Maria), Jussi Lankoski (Kristian), Tanja Heinänen (Krista), Anna Kuusamo (Shirley), Ossi Koskelainen (Ossi), Johannes Ekholm (Johannes Ekholm).
    103 min
    Languages: Finnish and English.
    Subtitle options: Swedish, Finnish, Finnish for the hard-of-hearing.
    Festival premiere: 8 Sep 2020 Venice Film Festival.
    Finnish premiere: 11 June 2021, released by: B-Plan Distribution.
    Helsinki corona emergency security: max 10 capacity, face masks, distancing, hand hygiene.
    Press screening at Finnkino Tennispalatsi 2, with Swedish subtitles by Nina Donner, Helsinki, 8 June 2021 at 10 am.

Tagline: “Sometus. Panetus. Rakkaus”.

Synopsis: “ After losing an interesting film job to her nemesis Kristian, Hanna teams up with her sister and counterculture friends to create a parody romance on Instagram between herself and the young actor Ekku. They are passionate to make visible how the society is hungry for romantic narratives. Hanna starts living a crowd-pleasing love story for the public, only to find herself tangled up in the unresolved past with her “you were never my boyfriend” friend Lasse, who also happens to be the real-life co-writer and cinematographer of Fucking with Nobody. As the fake romance starts affecting everyone involved, a hurricane of desires, fantasies, hurt and intimacy is set off. Everyone involved has to decide what and how they are ready to put in front of the camera. Fiction and auto-fiction crash and melt into each other, as writer-director Hannaleena Hauru plays the lead role of an ever-single film director “Hanna”. ”

A word from the director: “ To make a portrait about relationships and intimacy in our times, I’ve found no other solution than to come as close to reality as possible – not only in the emotional content, but also in the cinematic solutions on how the story is told to the audience. The character Hanna says in the film “If I think of any memory I have about falling in love, they all relate to touch and smell rather than visual images”. I share this thought with the character, and that’s why I wanted to use haptic visuality to juxtapose more traditional imaginery seen in cinema. For me this sensory approach of Hanna is clashing in the film with both the social media images, as well as the with the fantasies presented through Lasse. For the ensemble approach and complex storylines, I have intentionally wanted to study how emotion can move through different characters. In the case of this film all characters are caleidoscopic reflections of Hanna and Lasse.Where in my previous films all fictional characters are some kind of reflections of my personal life, in Fucking with Nobody the study point was to build a fictional universe, that unfolds to be a presentation of the actual relationship of the two screenwriters of the film, Hanna and Lasse. Fucking with Nobody is a satire, the aestethics and acting style is toying with autofiction. Half of the scenes you see in the film are based on written dialogues, the other half is based on scenes written in detail in the script, but actors creating the dialogues. Only very few images in the film are documentary or full improvisation. All primary cast was involved increating the characters and their arcs in the film. ”

AA: Hannaleena Hauru's Fucking with Nobody is the most original Finnish film of the year.

It is a reversal of Hauru's previous movie, The Thick Lashes of Lauri Mäntyvaara. Both are satires. In The Thick Lashes, Satu and Heidi declared war on commercial love, targeting wedding planners, geisha schools and quark cruises for sportsmen. The farce style, cartoonish effects, outlandish reactions and sight gags about consumer society evoked Frank Tashlin and Jerry Lewis, but also Vera Chytilova and Penelope Spheeris, as well as Kaisa Rastimo and Auli Mantila.

There is a certain similarity in the premise of Fucking with Nobody. Hanna and her team design an anarchistic art project on Instagram to parody a conventional romantic relationship. Hanna conducts a fake love affair with her gay friend Ekku. It is a performance meant to deconstruct obsolete power structures and romantic codes.

Inevitably, the Instagram experiment goes viral and becomes a huge phenomenon. Nobody understands it as satire. Instead, it becomes a source of inspiration for followers, and a cause of misunderstandings and embarrassments for Hanna and Ekku. The fake Instagram romance threatens Ekku's real relationship. The comedy evolves on the interface of reality and unreality.

On the one hand, the fake romance gets more daring, producing “sex positive“ YouTube videos, including guidelines for clitoris stimulation, expanding possibilities to bondage, piercing and the proper use of vibrators. To avoid the curse of “hetero binary romance bullshit“ a foray to the queer scene of Berlin is introduced, including a gay leather club complete with coprophilia (read: dropping shit).

When the “carnevalization of bourgeois intimate relationships“ proceeds to parodies of commercials, advertisements and product placement, the parody indistinguishable from the object, Hanna's team loses faith in the project's critical potential. Hanna and Ekku are photographed for a cover story in the Image magazine. Their romance performance starts to seem like the real thing, whatever that is.

Finally the protagonists are forced to ask the question: “Hey, on what level of this movie are we now?“

In the middle of the maze, the gay couple (Ekku and Ara) appear as a center of sanity and gravity. Ara seems to be the only one to experience real feelings in this narrative of make-believe.

There is a “real“ film project in production simultaneously: a film about Vampira (Maila Nurmi) that had been planned for Hanna to direct but has been trusted / thrusted to the male director Kristian instead. In the magnetic field of Hanna and Ekku's “love affair“ even that project goes awry, and Kristian finally appears as Vampira, as if inspired by Hanna to act in the leading role of his own film.

In the middle of the most bewildering goings-on runs a silver thread. In unexpected moments we hear confessions such as: “Men and women hardly even speak the same language. Women are better equipped to deal with emotions. They have been educated and forced to do that since early childhood. A woman is a face and feelings. A man is a torso and a penis“.

Hannaleena Hauru in her production notes quotes models including Monty Python, Mae West, Sacha Baron Cohen and Andy Kaufman. There is no imitation in Fucking with Nobody. We are witnessing the evolution of an original satirical talent.

BEYOND THE JUMP BREAK: DATA FROM THE PRESS KIT:

Get Out

Jordan Peele: Get Out (US 2019) starring Daniel Kaluuya as Chris Washington.

Get Out / Get Out .
    US © 2019 Universal Studios. PC: Blumhouse Productions / QC Entertainment. P: Jason Blum, Edward H. Hamm, Jr., Sean McKittrick, Jordan Peele.
    D+SC: Jordan Peele. DP: Toby Oliver – colour – 2.39:1 – source format: CFast 2.0 – ProRes 4444 (3.2K) – master format: 2K. PD: Rusty Smith. AD: Chris Craine. Set dec: Leonard R. Spears. Cost: Nadine Haders. Makeup: Remi Savva. Hair: Voni Hinkle, Carl Variste (Fairhope). SFX: Ryan Cox. VFX: Ingenuity Studios. M: Michael Abels. S: Trevor Gates. ED: Gregory Plotkin. Casting: Terri Taylor.
    CAST (copied from Wikipedia):
Daniel Kaluuya as Chris Washington
Zailand Adams as 11-year-old Chris
Allison Williams as Rose Armitage
Bradley Whitford as Dean Armitage
Caleb Landry Jones as Jeremy Armitage
Stephen Root as Jim Hudson
Lakeith Stanfield as Andre Hayworth / Logan King
Catherine Keener as Missy Armitage
Lil Rel Howery as TSA Agent Rod Williams, Chris's best friend
Erika Alexander as Detective Latoya
Marcus Henderson as Walter
Betty Gabriel as Georgina
Richard Herd as Roman Armitage
Keegan-Michael Key as NCAA Prospect
Writer-director Jordan Peele voices the sounds made by the wounded deer, and narrates a UNCF commercial.
[NCAA = National Collegiate Athletic Association, UNCF = United Negro College Fund, TSA = Transport Security Administration].
    Loc: Alabama, USA.
    104 min
    Festival premiere: 23 Jan 2017 Sundance Film Festival
    US and Canada premiere: 24 Feb 2017
    Finnish premiere: 5 May 2017, released by Finnkino.
    Blu-ray edition (Universal 2018) with 14 subtitles, bonus features and commentary tracks.
    Blu-ray viewed at home with English subtitles on a 4K tv set in Lappeenranta, 11 June 2021.

AA: In his debut feature film, Jordan Peele rises to the stratosphere of Alfred Hitchcock, Roman Polanski and David Lynch.

Get Out belongs to the horror film's new wave that started around 2014 and on which Jason Zineman wrote an insightful essay, "Home Is Where the Horror Is" in The New York Times. I have seen too few of these films, but among the ones I have seen, Get Out stands out.

Zineman observes that many new wave horror films proceed in the context of the family, the house, and the home. The concept of "the uncanny" ("das Unheimliche"), developed by Ernst Jentsch and Sigmund Freud, inspired by E. T. A. Hoffmann and F. W. J. Schelling is particularly rewarding in discussing these films.

Jordan Peele introduces a new disturbing angle to the uncanny. There is a family, a house, and a home here, too, in the familiar literal meaning. But Get Out is also about the United States as a home, a homeland, a motherland. In Get Out, the United States appears as a horror movie from the Black point of view.

...

Starting from the first shot Jordan Peele creates an irresistible tension and drive. Get Out bears the hallmark of the best horror movies of a genuine feeling of a compelling inner urge, an ability to reach beyond consciousness and awareness.

In the beginning there are situations like in Guess Who's Coming to Dinner and Meet the Parents. A liberal, unprejudiced family who would have voted Obama for a third term. But nothing is what it seems.

The hypnosis sequences are extraordinary. The mind trip leads Chris (Daniel Kaluuya) to a "sunken place". Another anthology piece is the bingo lottery, in which the winner is the blind art dealer Jim Hudson. The prize is Chris, master photographer.

There are aspects of Donovan's Brain, Seconds, Rosemary's Baby and The Stepford Wives in the story, but Jordan Peele's touch is original and irresistible. As a horror movie, Get Out delivers, and Peele excels both in memorable detail and the profound subtext. The moments of shock are organic to the whole.

...

I have been aware since the premiere that Get Out is a film I need to see, but I have been waiting for the right moment. I thank Mirkka Kallio for making it happen.

SOUNDTRACK LISTING FROM THE IMDB:

Wonder Wheel

Woody Allen: Wonder Wheel (US 2017) starring Kate Winslet as Ginny Rannell.

Wonder Wheel / Wonder Wheel.
    US © 2017 Gravier Productions, Inc. Amazon Studios present in association with Gravier Productions – A Perdido Production. P: Erika Aronson, Letty Aronson, Edward Walson.
    D+SC: Woody Allen. Cin: Vittorio Storaro – color (ACES) – 2.00:1 – source formats: F55 RAW 4K, F65 RAW 4K – master format: 4K – release: D-Cinema. PD: Santo Loquasto. AD: Miguel López-Castillo. Set dec: Regina Graves. Cost: Suzy Benzinger. Makeup: Stacey Panepinto. Hair: Jerry Popolis. SFX: Mike Myers [IX]. VFX: Glenn Allen (visual effects producer: Brainstorm Digital). No original score music. Soundtrack listing: beyond the jump break. S: Robert Hein. ED: Alisa Lepselter. Casting: Patricia DiCerto.
    C from Wikipedia:
Kate Winslet as Ginny Rannell, Humpty's wife and Richie's mother and Carolina's stepmother
Juno Temple as Carolina Rannell, Humpty's grown daughter from his first marriage
Justin Timberlake as Mickey Rubin, a lifeguard and the film's narrator
Jim Belushi as Humpty Rannell, a recovering alcoholic, Ginny's husband, Carolina's father, and Richie's stepfather
Jack Gore as Richie Rannell, Ginny's young son
Tony Sirico as Angelo, a gangster
Steve Schirripa as Nick, a gangster
Debi Mazar as birthday party guest
Thomas Guiry as flirtatious man at Ruby's
Max Casella as Ryan, Humpty's fishing buddy
David Krumholtz as Jake, Mickey's friend
    Filming dates: 15 Sep – 28 Oct 2016.
    Loc: Deno's Wonder Wheel Amusement Park (Coney Island, Brooklyn, New York City). New York, Staten Island.
    Typeface: Windsor Light Condensed.
    101 min
    The Wonder Wheel in the film is the actual Coney Island Wonder Wheel. Opened in 1920, it has been designated as an official New York landmark and is still in operation a hundred years later.
    Festival premiere: 14 Oct 2017 New York Film Festival.
    US premiere: 1 Dec 2017 (limited), 15 Dec 2017 (wide).
    Finnish premiere: 29 Dec 2017, released by Finnkino.
    Dvd released in 2019 by Scanbox / Universal Sony Pictures Home Entertainment Nordic & Baltics AB with Finnish, Swedish, Norwegian and Danish subtitles, Finnish subtitles by Jaana Wiik.
    Dvd borrowed from Helsinki City Library, Rikhardinkatu Library.
    Dvd viewed at home in Lappeenranta on a 4K tv screen, 6 June 2021.
   
Woody Allen belongs to the film-makers from whom I want to see everything. Today I finally caught up with Wonder Wheel, an amazing and brilliant look at illusion and reality in romantic dreams and everyday family life, all reflected in the make-believe world of an amusement park at Coney Island. I usually take copious notes while watching a film, but Wonder Wheel is so engrossing and engaging that it took me quite a while before I was able to start.

No director in the history of the cinema has had more superb casts than Allen. In Wonder Wheel I believe all four leading actors appear in his film for the first time. Like Cate Blanchett and Kristen Stewart previously, Kate Winslet gets an opportunity to create something new, different and great. Winslet's performance as Ginny is quietly disturbing. It is a subtle study of a woman whose talent has been repressed and wasted. Winslet's ability to convey profound currents via silence and immobility is memorable in a similar fashion in her wonderful performance in Ammonite.

Jim Belushi is cast against type as the recovering alcoholic husband Humpty. Belushi creates a complex persona, capable of both terrible injustice and tenderness. Juno Temple is appealing as Humpty's daughter Carolina who is in trouble with the mob, having informed to the FBI ("I know where all the bodies are buried").

Justin Timberlake as the young lifeguard Mickey provides both beefcake and a direct address discourse on the essence of tragedy (his dream is to become a great playwright like Eugene O'Neill). The athletic dreamboat, the confident and assured Mickey is the direct opposite to Allen's typical schlemiel protagonist. Mickey belongs to a lineage including Jean-Pierre Aumont in Lac aux dames and Patrick Swayze in Dirty Dancing.

Wonder Wheel provides both escapism and an exposé of escapism. It is based on clichés but goes beyond them, revealing both the truth and the deception of clichés. Love is a dream that can become reality. Dream can help us survive reality, or it can prevent us from facing reality. In all main characters we see both sides: a talent for love, and a temptation for self-deception.

Wonder Wheel is in an unusual way a study in tragedy, as lectured by Mickey: we sense the capacity to grandeur, but there is a fatal weakness in each character. With Ginny, it's infidelity, with Humpty, alcohol, with Carolina, naivety, and with Mickey, philandering. Associations run to Phaedra and Desire Under the Elms.

Most prominently, Wonder Wheel is a tragedy of jealousy in which both mother (Ginny) and (Humpty's) daughter (Carolina) love the same young man (Mickey). Let's observe the beautiful account of the romance between a mature woman and a young man. The affair is wonderful as long as it lasts, but Mickey is not ready to commit. He is still immature. There is nothing cynical or facile in the way their story is told.

After Café Society, Wonder Wheel is Allen's second digitally captured movie and his second collaboration with master cinematographer Vittorio Storaro. Allen and Storaro again use glossy digital unreality as a means of expression. The magic world, the make-believe, has interested Allen for a long time in films including The Purple Rose of Cairo, Shadows and Fog, Sweet and Lowdown, and Scoop. Here the digitally enhanced gorgeous visual approach is both enchanting and tragic in its shallowness.

A similar naive dream-world is evoked on the film's wonderful soundtrack, consisting solely of Allen's beloved vintage popular records, with titles such as "Coney Island Washboard" and "Kiss of Fire" (sung by Georgia Gibbs). The soundtrack provides an unusual background to tragedy.

Café Society took place in Hollywood and the high end nightclub scene of New York. The dramatis personae of Wonder Wheel belong to the working class and hard-working small enterpreneurs. Woody Allen views their life with affection and empathy.

...

Having seen the film I had a look at some of the reviews, by critics I most highly respect. I am sure they will regret those reviews more bitterly than anything they have ever done in their lives. They are documents of infinite shame to the profession of film criticism. Having read them I felt physically ill and did not sleep well.

I believe in fair play. Bless you Woody Allen, please never stop making films.

I am a Me Too partisan dal primo giorno. It's a world historical movement. False accusations and boycotts can damage it greatly. This is only the beginning, and the watchword must be justice.

BEYOND THE JUMP BREAK: SOUNDTRACK LISTING FROM THE IMDB:

The United States vs. Billie Holiday

Lee Daniels: The United States vs. Billie Holiday (US 2021) starring Andra Day.

The United States vs. Billie Holiday / The United States vs. Billie Holiday.
    US 2021 © 2020 Billie Holiday Film. Hulu Presents – a Hulu original – in association with New Slate Ventures. P: Lee Daniels, Jordan Fudge, Joe Roth, Jeff Kirschenbaum, Pamela Oas Williams, Tucker Tooley. A Lee Daniels Film. A Lee Daniels Entertainment Production. A Roth-Kirschenbaum Films Production.
    D: Lee Daniels. SC: Suzan-Lori Parks – based on the book Chasing the Scream: The First and Last Days of the War on Drugs (2015) by Johann Hari. DP: Andrew Dunn – negative: 35 mm, some scenes 16 mm – master format: 4K – release format: D-Cinema. PD: Daniel T. Dorrance. AD: Félix Larivière-Charron. Set dec: Geneviève Bolvin, Elise de Blois. Cost: Paolo Nieddu.
    [M: Billie Holiday, n.c.]. M: Kris Bowers. Executive M producer: Salaam Remi. Executive M producer for Unigram: Amanda Ghost. M supervisor: Lynn Fainchtein.
    Soundtrack listing: beyond the jump break.
    S: Robert Hein. ED: Jay Rabinowitz.
    CAST from Wikipedia:
Andra Day as Billie Holiday
Trevante Rhodes as Jimmy Fletcher
Garrett Hedlund as Harry J. Anslinger
Leslie Jordan as Reginald Lord Devine
Miss Lawrence as Miss Freddy
Adriane Lenox as Mrs. Fletcher
Natasha Lyonne as Tallulah Bankhead
Rob Morgan as Louis McKay
Da'Vine Joy Randolph as Roslyn
Evan Ross as Sam Williams
Tyler James Williams as Lester Young
Tone Bell as John Levy
Blake DeLong as Agent Carter
Dana Gourrier as Sadie Fagan
Melvin Gregg as Joe Guy
Erik LaRay Harvey as Monroe
Ray Shell as Carl the Drummer
    130 min
    US release: 26 Feb 2021 (Hulu).
    Finnish release: 2 July 2021 (theatrical) by Finnkino with Finnish / Swedish subtitles by Jaana Wiik / Charlotte Elo.
    Corona security: max 10 capacity, face masks, distancing, hand hygiene.
    Viewed at a press screening at Tennispalatsi 3, Helsinki, 2 June 2021.

AA: Cinemas in Helsinki are still suffering from the regional lockdown restriction of max 10 capacity, and they are all closed save a few intrepid independents such as Kino Engel. Last weekend cinemas in Lappeenranta opened for a capacity of 20, and on 4 June they open for full capacity. Finnkino theatres in all of Finland will be open by 11 June, in Helsinki for what seems like max 10 capacity but might turn out to be higher.

During the lockdown, I have been very grateful for press screenings.

I admire the high quality of movie access online. I have no complaints. But more than ever I have realized the superiority of the movie experience in a cinema. I have traditionally shunned press screenings because the audience experience in them is so twisted. Nobody laughs if the film is a comedy or if the scene is humoristic, etc. The worst are gala screenings in the presence of film-makers. I am instantly tuned into a mood of courtesy and cannot sincerely assess the movie because I root so much for the film-makers whose hard work I respect. Regarding Aki Kaurismäki's The Other Side of Hope I remember the icy atmosphere at the gala premiere and the warm flow the day after at Cinema Orion when we screened a 35 mm print for a dedicated audience at Cinema Orion. It was a different film.

During the pandemic I have savoured press screenings. The warmth, the reactions, the atmosphere, the laughter and the pheromones of the audience are gone. Films are often about sex and violence, they bypass reason and reach our unconscious, even our "reptilian brain", unleashing a potent hormone cocktail into the atmosphere of the cinema. None of that this time. But during the pandemic the safety and the distancing of the cinemas have been very relaxing, whether in Helsinki, Lappeenranta or Bologna.

Watching The United States vs. Billie Holiday in a press screening for max ten viewers is a more meditative experience than a normal cinema screening would be. This is a movie about sex and violence. This is a movie about drugs and jazz. This is a political film about racism, repression and fighting for your rights. The subject is potentially scandalous and sensational, but although the film is highly charged and passionate, it is tempered by intelligence. It is a film of outrage, but the main thrust is to make us think.

It is a top production, independently financed outside the mainstream. The strong screenplay by Suzan-Lori Parks was inspired by Johann Hari's non-fiction book Chasing the Scream: The First and Last Days of the War on Drugs, its chapters on the film's two protagonists: Billie Holiday and Harry J. Anslinger, First Commissioner of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics (FBN).

The saga of Billie Holiday could easily fall into the "rise and fall" formula of artist biopics. But Johann Hari and Suzan-Lori Parks select an unusual angle into the theme of drug addiction: "the War on Drugs" as a key instrument in racist oppression and violence. Black artists seek solace from drugs to alleviate pain from racist violence. But drug addiction exposes them to a circle of crime and punishment. They become extra vulnerable to the structural violence of the society.

Although Billie Holiday was dealt an abysmally bad hand, she rose to superstardom and created one of the most recognizable idioms in 20th century culture. More than that, she did not compromise, and became a pioneer of the civil rights movement by singing her signature song "Strange Fruit" about lynching.

The key dynamics in The United States vs. Billie Holiday is about the singer's defiant civil rights stance and the government's war on Billie Holiday. It is not a surprise that the FBI and the FBN are after her, but, shockingly, they manage to infiltrate Holiday's nearest and dearest to try to suppress her and even plant drugs on her. They succeed with her husbands and managers, but when they send a double agent, Jimmy Fletcher, he switches sides. The drama is like from a paranoid Hollywood thriller but seems to be true.

The thrust of the film is that government agencies killed Billie Holiday, at least indirectly, but perhaps even directly. And this happened with the connivance of Holiday's inner circle. I'll be intrigued to learn more.

The movie is a tragedy but belongs to the lineage of Joe Hill: "I never died" says he. Those who harass Billie Holiday to death make her immortal. Her last lines in the movie are directed to Harry J. Anslinger:

" You think I'm going to stop singing that song. Your grandkids will be singing Strange Fruit. Y'all motherfuckers think you got something on me. You don't. You stupid bitches ain't got shit. Suck my black ass. "

This is a top production. The glamorous dresses are by Paolo Nieddu in collaboration with the House of Prada, the hairdos by Stacie Merriman and Charles Gregory Ross, and the makeup by Laini Thompson.

The cinematographer Andrew Dunn shoots on photochemical film, helping sustain a vibrant, physical feeling even in digital transfer.

The producer-director Lee Daniels succeeds in conveying an original vision of the legendary singer, different from Lady Sings the Blues (starring Diana Ross) and the recent portrait documentary Billie. He brings the bold screenplay to life uncompromisingly.

One of the hallmarks of Suzan-Lori Parks's screenplay is that it is structured intelligently around Billie Holiday's songs. Lee Daniels's major coup is casting the superb singer Andra Day in the leading role, followed by the decision of having her sing all the songs herself. (A similar decision was made in Lady Sings the Blues where Diana Ross interpreted the Billie Holiday songbook).

This is Andra Day's debut as an actor, and she is breathtaking in the extremely demanding part, completely different from her own persona. She is a fighter, an artist, outraged and outrageous, engrossing as a star presence. This movie becomes an Andra Day vehicle. She embodies the concept of "the triumph of the spirit" in tribute to Billie Holiday.

We don't hear Billie Holiday in this movie. For a while in the final song "All Of Me" I thought it was her but evidently I misunderstood.

A curious observation in the main credits of the Billie Holiday movies: the music credit in Lady Sings the Blues goes to Michel Legrand, in Billie to nobody, and in this one to Kris Bowers. In none is Billie Holiday credited for the music, except in soundtrack details.

The United States vs. Billie Holiday is a film of high quality. The traumatic scene in which the young Billie Holiday witnesses a scene of lynching is conveyed powerfully in a shared opium delirium by Billie with the double-agent-turned-lover Jimmy. Scenes of prostitution, domestic violence and police brutality are unvarnished and uncliched. On the other hand, Billie's atavistic and exceptional sex drive is memorably shown as a force of life. Frank sex scenes in movies almost invariably fail. Not here.

Perhaps to avoid sensationalism, Lee Daniels occasionally adopts a laid back approach, like putting on the break time and again. As a rule, the scenes with Billie Holiday are exciting and full of life. The FBN scenes are less convincing, which is a pity. They are built on the disturbing concept that the first Black Federal agents in the history of the US were assigned to infiltrate and betray fellow Blacks in the "War on Drugs". It gradually dawns on them that it is a codename for a war on Blacks.

The shared opium delirium in the heart of the narrative contains the unhealed trauma of Billie's memory of lynching. Another striking framing device is a radio interview session by the journalist Reginald Lord Devine played by Leslie Jordan in one of the most memorable non-binary performances in contemporary cinema. The twist is that he/she is just as clueless about Billie Holiday as everybody else.

SOUNDTRACK LISTING FROM THE IMDB BEYOND THE JUMP BREAK:

Lasse Vairio: Delade drömmar / Shared Dreams

Lasse Vairio: Delade drömmar / Shared Dreams (FI 2021). A black and white photograph showing a cliff, the sun and a ship.

The artist Lasse Vairio was born in 1966 in Helsingfors.

FI 2021. Artist: Lasse Vairio. Single channel video, stereo sound, shot on 16 mm b&w print stock.
    23 min
    Kuvan kevät 2021: MFA Degree Show of the Academy of Fine Arts of Uniarts Helsinki.
    Exhibition Laboratory (C), Merimiehenkatu 36 C, 00150, Helsinki
    Viewed on 1 June 2021, with a meeting with Lasse Vairio.

Lasse Vairio:

" Något föll ned
Något gjorde ett märke i örat
Medan jag diskade en bottenlös kastrull

från väster till öster
(vänster till höger)
Mellan de höga tallarna
och ner i Havet

utan att stiga över tröskeln
håller jag andan
för att inte bli del av "

...

" Something came down
something made a mark on my ear
while I was washing a bottomless saucepan

from the west to the east
(left to the right)
Between the tall pines
and down in the Sea

without climbing over the treshold
holding my breath
not to be part of  " (Lasse Vairio)

AA: A lyrical poem, a personal film, a documentary journey of memory and free associations. Shared Dreams also belongs to the current of artists' films relevant to the philosophy of perception.

I enter in the middle, facing a terrain vague view that to me somehow evokes the opening of Georges Franju's Le Sang des bêtes or vacant spaces captured by Antonioni. It is a scene of emptiness, charged with mystery.

Memories include a caged child, an early humiliation by father. Time lapse footage catches a crescent Moon crossing the night sky. Several objects are imbued with what Andrei Tarkovsky called "sealed time", with affinities with the Japanese wabi sabi aesthetics.

The sky and the sea are major elements. Personally, I was reminded of my earliest childhood memories: the sky and the sea of the harbour city Vaasa. A child cannot make sense of bigger contexts and continuities, just the immediate experience of the elements. Jellyfish is examined in close-up.

A lighthouse is glimpsed, with a Fresnel lens such as was highlighted in Robert Eggers's The Lighthouse, and what I believe is a radar. We travel far North to the land of ice and mountains. We visit a construction site. We pause to meditate on estranged details of autumnal nature. Embers are glowing in a brief colour footage in a black and white film.

The non-stop screening proceeds to the terrain vague anew, and I start re-watching the film. The images now reveal new depth and density. This impressive, lyrical movie gains in strength when revisited.

The title of the film reminds me of Jean Cocteau's opening words in Le Testament d'Orphée:

« Le privilège du cinématographe, c'est qu'il permet à un grand nombre de personnes de rêver ensemble le même rêve."

" It is the film-maker's privilege to be able to allow a large number of people to dream the same dream together. "

The digital presentation succeeds in conveying the sensitivity of the photochemical 16 mm stock on which the film has been made.

Ilya Repin (exhibition at Ateneum)

Ilya Repin (1844–1930) : What Freedom! / «Какой простор!». 1903. Oil on canvas. 179 cm x 284.5 cm. Collection: Russian Museum. Ж-2774. Please do click on the image to enlarge it.

EXHIBITION
Repin. Exhibition at the Ateneum Art Museum, Finnish National Gallery, Helsinki, 27 April – 29 Aug 2021. Produced by the Ateneum Art Museum and the Petit Palais (Musée des Beaux-Arts de la Ville de Paris / Paris Musées), in collaboration with the State Tretyakov Gallery and the State Russian Museum. The curator of the exhibition at the Ateneum is the chief curator Timo Huusko. After Ateneum, the exhibition will be on display at the Petit Palais in Paris.
    The original opening of 9 March 2021 was postponed due to the corona emergency.
    Corona security: pre-booking, limited capacity, staggered entry, face masks, distancing, hand hygiene.
    Viewed 6 May 2021.

CATALOGUE
Ilya Repin. Editor: Anne-Maria Pennonen. Photo editor: Lene Wahlsten. With contributions by Marja Sakari, Tatjana Yudenkova, David Jackson, Timo Huusko and Satu Itkonen.
    Graphic design: Minna Luoma.
    Ateneum Publications Vol. 145.
    Three editions: Finnish, Swedish and English.
    207 pages : richly illustrated : 28 cm.
    ISBN 978-952-737125-1 hardbound.
    Printing: Livonia Print © 2021.
    Helsinki: Finnish National Gallery / Ateneum Art Museum, 2021.

OTHER BOOKS CONSULTED
Ilya Repin: Ilja Repin: Mennyt aika läheinen (Far and Near / Далёкое близкое, 1937). Finnish translation: Mirja Rutanen. Porvoo – Helsinki – Juva: WSOY, 1970. – A wonderful book of memoirs.

Tito Colliander: Ilja Repin, ukrainalainen taiteilija. Translation from the Swedish original: Lauri Kemiläinen. Helsinki: Kustannusosakeyhtiö Tammi, 1944. – Largely based on the same notes of Repin's from which the painter's memoirs were posthumously edited.

From the official introduction: " A master of psychological portrayals and depictions of Russian folklife

Ilya Repin (1844–1930) is above all known as a master of psychological portrayals of people and depictions of Russian folklife. The Ateneum is able to display Repin’s best-known paintings with masterful details, including Barge Haulers on the Volga (1870–1873) and Zaporozhian Cossacks Writing a Mocking Letter to the Turkish Sultan (1880–1891), both from the State Russian Museum in St. Petersburg.

The exhibition’s many portraits feature members of the artist’s family, as well as cultural influencers of the time, such as the composer Modest Mussorgsky and the author Leo Tolstoy. In all, Repin painted more than 300 portraits, including portrayals of many influential women in culture.

Ilya Repin, the most significant Russian artist of his time, depicted the Russian people, who had been freed from serfdom in the 1860s, as well as the intelligentsia of the era, and the relationship between the people and their rulers. His work has also strongly influenced the Finnish people’s current perception of the essence of Russianness.

The exhibition is the first review of Repin’s entire career in Finland in the 21st century. The exhibition features more than 140 paintings and paper-based works spanning a period of more than sixty years. Many of the works are shown in Helsinki for the first time. The Ateneum collection also includes a great number of Repin’s works." (From the official introduction)

AA: My first visit to a large art exhibition in half a year is to Ateneum's grand retrospective of Ilya Repin, the Ukraine-born master of Russian realism.

As a contributor to a volume of essays on Leo Tolstoy that was published in January 2021, I have been absorbed in Russian society, history and realism for a couple of years. I confronted Ilya Repin also during my Tolstoy quest. Repin and Tolstoy were long-term friends, and Repin's Tolstoy chapter in his memoirs contains some of the most engrossing pages about the author.

They were opponents in many ways, particularly regarding Tolstoy's infamous, polemical What Is Art? treatise in which Tolstoy denied the worth of almost the whole legacy of world art. Disregarding that, Repin and Tolstoy connected in profound spiritual levels.

The last pages of Repin's Tolstoy memoirs are devoted to their long riding tour in 1909, when Tolstoy was 81 years old, one year before his death. Repin admires Tolstoy's tact, skill and bravado with his beloved horse Délire. And Leo's patience: when he has tried to lead the horse through the wrong forest thicket path Leo finally understands to give up and let the horse find the right path.

Having read those genial memoirs, it is startling to discover the last Tolstoy portrait painted by Repin while the author was alive, made during the year of the last ride. (Based on his sketches, Repin painted some more portraits after Tolstoy's death). Repin created 12 portraits of Tolstoy, several of which are on display at Ateneum. In addition, he made 25 drawings. There are also eight sketches of Tolstoy's family members, 17 book illustrations and three plaster busts.

That 1909 Tolstoy portrait was for me the biggest revelation and the most startling experience in the Ateneum exhibition. All other Repin's Tolstoy portraits are full of vigour, and there is a powerful spiritual radiation, although Tolstoy is usually in humble and ordinary clothes. There is a sense of passion and perseverance. They evoke a prophet, a seer, an apostle, a shaman.

But in this portrait in the pink chair from the year 1909 the keynote is agony. Tolstoy was disturbed about the recent developments in Russia. "Stolypin's necktie" had been used mercilessly to crush opposition. On "Bloody Sunday", the Czar's Imperial Guard massacred peaceful, unarmed demonstrators led by Father Gapon who wanted to deliver a petition to the Czar. Such events were a blow to Tolstoy's faith in non-violent resistance. The conflicts and contradictions were turning unbearable to the ageing and ailing author who in the next year tried to retire from the world.

All this can be felt in the last portrait.

Ilya Repin belongs to the greatest masters of portrait painting. The Tolstoy cycle is only an example. In all portraits we have a feeling of being in the presence of a real, vivid and impressive human being. Repin created a portrait gallery of the Great Men and Women of Russia. When we contemplate Repin's Alexander III, Nikolai II and Kerenski we get an inside track into history. Tsarevna Sophia Alekseyevna, Varvara Uexküll von Gyldenbrandt, Elizaveta Zvantseva and Eleonora Duse (a frequent visitor to Russia) are remarkable presences. His own family Repin painted with warm affection and a sense of humour.

John Berger's "male gaze" discourse has been recently revived for the Me Too age. Repin survives such a critical examination. His female portraits are proud, independent and intelligent. They are not passive objects of the male gaze. Instead, Repin's women gaze at us with their heads held up high.

This is my first Ilya Repin solo exhibition, but many of his paintings I have seen at the Russian Museum. During the corona emergency I have had time to read and study comfortably three Ilya Repin books, including the exhibition catalogue, so I was pretty well prepared when my turn came to visit the museum. In our age of record visitor figures to museums, we have already been used to queues in Le Louvre and the Hermitage. Now the pandemic adds a new twist to the Golden Age of Museums.

It adds to the reverence of art to have to stand in line to review it. But yet again, people wander in the exhibition photographing paintings with their mobile phones, instead of viewing them, although superior images exist online of almost all. (But of the Tolstoy in 1909 painting I only discovered an inferior photo on the web.)

Most paintings are familiar, but intriguing rarities are dispersed among them, many of them from Finnish collections. The last 12 years of his life Repin lived in Finland with a Nansen passport. Repin did not emigrate, but since December 1917, Repin's villa Penates in Eastern Karelia happened to remain on the West side of the border, in the newly independent Republic of Finland.

There is a grand and engrossing vision on display at the exhibition. It is an epic survey of the history of Russia and Ukraine. The painting of Ivan the Terrible after the murder of his son in 1581 was withdrawn from the exhibition due to vandalism. But we have history paintings from the Zaporozhian Cossacks laughing at the Ottoman Sultan in 1676 and Tsarevna Sophia Alekseevna in her imprisonment in the Novodevichy Convent in 1698 till the Russian Revolutions in 1905 and 1917. Repin's painting on the Demonstration on October 17, 1905 is one of his most joyful, and his view of the Memorial at the Wall of the Communards at Père Lachaise (1883) has a special feeling of hopeful anticipation. But Repin condemned the bloodshed of Russia's Civil War, and his desolate Golgotha (1922) may be seen as a vision of the tragedy.

Even in Finland Repin's chain of great paintings on Russian history continued. In his partially sketchy Great Men of Finland (1927) he places in the middle the Finnish painter Axel Gallen-Kallela lighting his pipe, and himself standing next to him, with his back towards us, addressing General Mannerheim, the White General of Finland who in 1918 wanted to join the Russian Civil War to conquer Saint Petersburg. Mannerheim would have won the war, and that's why he got no backing, because the victory would have meant that Finland would have lost her independence.

A major current in the exhibition is rebellion, from post-Dekabrists to Oktyabrists. Before the Confession, two versions of the Unexpected Return (female and male), Meeting, and Arrest of a Propagandist are complex, disturbing, dynamic scenes. In his emblematic What Freedom! we can sense Repin's high hopes for the future of his country.

Almost all Repin's paintings can be examined at home in official high resolution digital transfers. Because of the epic quality of many it pays to study them on the biggest possible screen. But seen "live" it becomes possible to experience their three-dimensional brushstrokes. At close range the paintings are far from photorealistic. First they turn expressionistic, then abstract. It's worth the effort to "track forward and track back" to keep gaining new insights into these masterworks.

Finally, there is the aura of the unique artwork. Viewing the original portrait we are at two degrees of separation from Tolstoy.

Ammonite

Francis Lee: Ammonite (GB 2020) with Kate Winslet as Mary Anning and Saoirse Ronan as Charlotte Murchison.

Ammonite / Ammonite.
    GB/AU © 2020 The British Film Institute / British Broadcasting Corporation / Fossil Films Limited. PC: See-Saw Films. P: Iain Canning, Emile Sherman, Fodhla Cronin O'Reilly.
    D+SC: Francis Lee. DP: Stéphane Fontaine – colour – 1,85:1 – source format: Redcode RAW 6K, 7K, 8K – master format: 2K – release: D-Cinema. PD: Sarah Finlay. Cost: Michael O'Connor. Hair and makeup: Ivana Primorac. VFX: One Of Us. VFX: Dupe VFX. M: composers: Dustin O'Halloran, Volker Bertelmann. M supervisor: John Boughtwood. S: Wave Studios. ED: Chris Wyatt. Casting: Fiona Weir. Calligraphy: Deborah Hammond.
    Soundtrack selections:
– Johann Strauss (Vater) : Gesellschaftwalzer Op. 5 (1827)
– Clara Schumann : Romanze a-Moll für Klavier (1853), perf. Saoirse Ronan at the clavichord [tbc].
– Peter Gregson : Aria for solo cello in D Minor.
    C:
Kate Winslet as Mary Anning
Saoirse Ronan as Charlotte Murchison
Fiona Shaw as Elizabeth Philpot
Gemma Jones as Molly Anning
James McArdle as Roderick Murchison
Alec Secăreanu as Dr. Lieberson
Claire Rushbrook as Eleanor Butters
    Loc: Lyme Regis, Dorset. – Kent, Surrey, London.
    120 min
    Festival premiere: 11 Sep 2020 Toronto International Film Festival
    US premiere: 13 Nov 2020.
    British online premiere: 26 March 2021.
    Finnish festival premiere: 7 May 2021 Season Film Festival (Riemukupla).
    Distributed in Finland by Cinema Mondo with Finnish / Swedish subtitles by Anna Hiltunen / Joanna Erkkilä.
    Corona security: max 10 capacity, face masks, distancing, hand hygiene.
    Viewed at a press screening at Kino Engel 1, Helsinki, 4 May 2021.

Ammonites (ammonoids) are a group of extinct marine mollusc animals. They are excellent index fossils to link rock layers to specific geologic time periods. Their fossil shells usually take the form of planispirals, although there are some helically spiraled and nonspiraled forms. (Data edited from the Ammonoidea article in Wikipedia).

Mary Anning (1799–1847) "was an English fossil collector, dealer, and palaeontologist who became known around the world for finds she made in Jurassic marine fossil beds in the cliffs along the English Channel at Lyme Regis in the county of Dorset in Southwest England. Anning's findings contributed to changes in scientific thinking about prehistoric life and the history of the Earth". "Anning searched for fossils in the area's Blue Lias and Charmouth Mudstone cliffs, particularly during the winter months when landslides exposed new fossils that had to be collected quickly before they were lost to the sea. Her discoveries included the first correctly identified ichthyosaur skeleton; the first two nearly complete plesiosaur skeletons; the first pterosaur skeleton located outside Germany; and fish fossils. Her observations played a key role in the discovery that coprolites, known as bezoar stones at the time, were fossilised faeces, and she also discovered that belemnite fossils contained fossilised ink sacs like those of modern cephalopods." "It has been claimed that Anning's story was the inspiration for the tongue-twister 'She sells seashells by the seashore,' but there is no evidence for this. " (From the Mary Anning article in Wikipedia).

Synopsis from the press notes: " In the 1840s, acclaimed self-taught palaeontologist Mary Anning works alone on the wild and brutal Southern English coastline of Lyme Regis. The days of her famed discoveries behind her, she now hunts for common fossils to sell to rich tourists to support herself and her ailing widowed mother. When one such tourist, Roderick Murchison, arrives in Lyme on the first leg of a European tour, he entrusts Mary with the care of his young wife Charlotte, who is recuperating from a personal tragedy. Mary, whose life is a daily struggle on the poverty line, cannot afford to turn him down but, proud and relentlessly passionate about her work, she clashes with her unwanted guest. They are two women from utterly different worlds. Yet despite the chasm between their social spheres and personalities, Mary and Charlotte discover they can each offer what the other has been searching for: the realization that they are not alone. It is the beginning of a passionate and all-consuming love affair that will defy all social bounds and alter the course of both lives irrevocably. " (Synopsis from the press notes).

AA: In the beginning of Francis Lee's Ammonite, I thought for a fleeting while about Céline Sciamma's Portrait of a Lady in Fire, shot on the other side of La Manche / the English Channel. The films do share certain elements: desolation and solitude in the formidable presence of the Atlantic Ocean, and a forbidden love story between two women, but there the affinities end, although even here we meet a young woman unenthusiastic about marriage and a portrait secretly created about that woman by another woman who falls in love with her.

Mary Anning, however, is not a painter, but a hard-working fossilist, trained since childhood by her father to observe tides and storms that reveal Jurassic discoveries from the marine beds in the cliffs at Lyme Regis. Already in childhood Anning has learned to record her findings via drawings and written notes. The drawings are so accomplished that they are admired in leading scientific circles, as are of course the fossils themselves. Anning belongs to the generations whose discoveries start to undermine received notions of Creation before Darwin. Anning becomes a revered name among specialists, and her fossils are on display at the British Museum and other leading institutions, but no public credit is given. Instead names of the gentleman buyers are credited.

We witness an age of multiple discrimination. Mary Anning is a woman, and women started to get entrance into scientific societies only in the 20th century. She is not a member of the ruling elite, but a small enterpreneur living in circumstances comparable with a poor farmer or the working class. She is devoutly religious, but also a Congregationalist, a Dissenter, emphasizing the importance of education for the poor. She has learned to read and write at a Congregationalist Sunday school. Only members of the Church of England are accepted in official England.

Although Anning is a leading pioneer in the field of natural sciences, she lives a marginal life in hardship and poverty, and when she visits the British Museum, she is not welcomed as a hero and a special guest of honour but just a regular member of the crowd. In Ammonite, there is a strong current of anger based on this situation of injustice and exploitation. Kate Winslet channels this powerfully in her performance. She is very convincingly physical in her role of the pathbreaking explorer constantly battling the elements.

Mary lives with her mother Molly (Gemma Jones) who runs their curiosity shop. Molly is the mother of ten children, only two of whom have survived. Eight special figurines she washes, polishes and nurtures every night. Gradually we realize that they represent her eight deceased children. It is perhaps not surprising that Mary, having witnessed that and having displayed scientific talent since the age of 10, has not been interested in marriage.

That interest cannot possibly be stirred by visitors such as the geologist Roderick and his wife Charlotte Murchison (James McArdle and Saoirse Ronan), an upper-class couple where the woman has no independent position. Charlotte suffers from postnatal depression made particularly severe because her baby was stillborn. When Charlotte approaches Roderick for tenderness and sex, he turns her down because it's too soon to try to have another baby.

Roderick admires Mary and asks her to be a companion for Charlotte while he continues his geological tour. A mutual antipathy between the women gradually turns to disinterest, but when Charlotte, ordered to swim in the freezing ocean, catches pneumonia, Mary heals her tenderly with Philpot's Salve from a knowledgeable neighbour, Elizabeth Philpot (Fiona Shaw). The tender care leads to growing affection, and the women fall in love.

The account of intimacy, looks, smiles, touching, and sex, is tender and affectionate, painted in warm and vibrant colours. In a world hostile to women, Mary and Charlotte find each other despite being from extremely different circumstances, and are no longer alone in the world. They are able to unlock in each other a hidden potential of passion. Although the characters of the film are based on reality, the account of their private lives and affairs is fictional.

Affectionate details include Mary offering Charlotte fish pie (what we in Finland call kalakukko), Mary drawing Charlotte's portrait, and Charlotte playing Clara Schumann on the clavichord. From her loving look to another woman's baby we realize her need to become a mother herself one day.

Stéphane Fontaine's cinematography is eloquent in the rough and the smooth. This is a film of powerful contrasts, such as the freezing seafront weather vs. the warm tenderness of the human skin. The colour palette is vibrant and evocative. The digital cinematography in very high definition achieves a strong sense of the tangible and the physical.

P.S. In January 2022 news reached the press about the most complete fossil ever found in the UK of the "sea dragon" ichtyosaur. Mary Anning was credited as the first finder of the creature.

P.S. Gemma Conroy (The New York Times, 1 Nov 2022): the first complete ichtyosaur fossil, most likely discovered by Mary Anning, was destroyed in a Nazi air raid in May 1941. Now three copies have been found in the world's museums.

Txllxt TxllxT : "London – Cromwell Road – Natural History Museum 1881 by Alfred Waterhouse – Mary Anning, the Fossil Woman". 11 Sep 2010. From: Wikipedia.

Henry de la Beche (1796–1855) : Duria Antiquior. Famous watercolor by the geologist Henry de la Beche depicting life in ancient Dorset based on fossils found by Mary Anning. 1830. Collection: National Museum Cardiff. Source: http://www.sedgwickmuseum.org/education/ideas_and_evidence.html . Public domain. From: Wikipedia. Please do click on the image to enlarge it.

Deux / Two of Us

Filippo Meneghetti: Deux / Two of Us (2019) with Martine Chevallier (Madeleine) and Barbara Sukowa (Nina).

Yhdessä / Vi två.
    FR/LU/BE © 2019 Paprika Films / Tarantula / Artémis Productions. P: Pierre-Emmanuel Fleurantin & Laurent Baujard.
    D: Filippo Meneghetti. SC: Filippo Meneghetti & Malysone Bovorasmy – with additional writing by Florence Vignon. DP: Aurélien Marra – colour – 2.39:1 – release: 2K DCP. PD: Laurie Colson. Cost: Magdalena Labuz. M: original score: Michele Menini. S: Céline Bodson – 5.1. ED: Ronan Tronchot.
    Production manager: Vincent Canart. 1st assistant director: Brice Morin. Casting: Brigitte Moidon, Valérie Pangrazzi.
    Theme song: "Chariot (Sul mio carro)" (1963), originally French, called "Chariot" (1961, J. W. Stole = Franck Pourcel & Del Roma = Paul Mauriat) sung in Italian (with lyrics by Gaspare Gabriele Abbate & Bruno Pallesi) by Betty Curtis. (Globally well known is the American version "I Will Follow Him", adapted by Arthur Altman with new lyrics by Norman Gimbel, first recorded by Little Peggy March on her single "I Will Follow Him" / "Wind Up Doll" in 1963.)
    C: Barbara Sukowa (Nina), Martine Chevallier de la Comédie-Française (Madeleine), Léa Drucker (Anne), Muriel Benazeraf (Muriel), Jérôme Varanfrain (Frédéric).
    Loc: 28 Avenue Bouisson Bertrand, Montpellier (Madeleine and Nina's apartments). – Sommières, Gard (riverside scenes). – Thionville, Moselle (resting home).
    95 min
    Festival premiere: 7 Sep 2019 Toronto International Film Festival.
    French premiere: 12 Feb 2020.
    Finnish festival premiere: 8 May 2021 Season Film Festival.
    Distributed in Finland by Cinema Mondo with Finnish / Swedish subtitles by Outi Kainulainen / Joanna Erkkilä.
    Corona security: max 10 capacity, face masks, distancing, hand hygiene.
    Viewed at a press screening at Kino Engel 2, Helsinki, 4 May 2021.

Synopsis from the press kit: "Two retired women, Nina and Madeleine, have been secretly in love for decades. Everybody, including Madeleine’s family, thinks they are simply neighbors, sharing the top floor of their building. They come and go between their two apartments, enjoying the affection and pleasures of daily life together, until an unforeseen event turns their relationship upside down and leads Madeleine’s daughter to gradually unravel the truth about them."

AA: The story of a secret love comes as a shock to a family. A son and a daughter must face the realization that they have known nothing about their mother.

It starts in terms of a discreet arrangement. Madeleine has never revealed her new love to her children, although she has kept promising Nina to do so. The tension becomes so unbearable that she suffers a stroke, becomes paralyzed and loses her faculty to speak.

When Nina keeps trying to contact and communicate with Madeleine, her children Anne and Frédéric and her nurse Muriel mistake her for a stalker. They change the locks to her apartment and prevent Nina from meeting her at a resting home.

The behaviour of the children and Muriel is understandable from their viewpoint because the misunderstood Nina goes berserk and turns violent.

However, the children realize that the resting home is not a good idea, and the daughter Anne has a change of heart.

A basic theme is what Henrik Ibsen called livsløgn in The Wild Duck: a fundamental self-deception, an illusion, a life lie. It can be for an invidual what a foundation myth is for a nation if that myth is based on an illusion.

The children have known that their mother Madeleine has been unhappy but they have believed that their father was nevertheless the great love of her life. Breaking their illusion has become overwhelming for Madeleine.

When Madeleine loses her power of communication, only the look and the touch of Nina can start to revive her. We have read and heard about the healing power of music, and in this movie it is the couple's theme song, "Chariot (Sul mio carro)" sung by Betty Curtis, that helps Madeleine regain the power of her look.

Among other things, Deux offers a warning about medicalization. Strong drugs in the resting home certainly help the staff by reducing patients to zombies, easily manipulated, but for the patients and those dear to them they mean clear and present danger.

Subtly directed by Filippo Meneghetti in his debut feature film, the character-driven Deux boasts sophisticated performances by Barbara Sukowa and Martine Chevallier as the lovers, and Léa Drucker and Jérôme Varanfrain as Madeleine's children.

Among the films themes is also class and ethnical discrimination in the rude treatment of Muriel the Mahgreb nurse, interpreted by Muriel Benazeraf. The violent Nina becomes herself a victim of violence as a consequence of a chain of misunderstandings, all due to the livsløgn from which all have suffered.

BEYOND THE JUMP BREAK: THE LYRICS TO "CHARIOT (SUL MIO CARRO)":

Promising Young Woman

Emerald Fennell: Promising Young Woman (US 2020) starring Carey Mulligan as Cassandra Thomas.

Lupaava nuori nainen.
    US © 2020 Promising Woman LLC. Focus Features a Comcast company presents in association with FilmNation Entertainment a LuckyChap Entertainment Production. P: Margot Robbie, Josey McNamara, Tom Ackerley, Ben Browning, Ashley Fox, Emerald Fennell. EX: Carey Mulligan, Glen Basner, Alison Cohen, Milan Popelka. Co-P: Fiona Walsh Heinz.
    D+SC: Emerald Fennell. DP: Benjamin Kračun – colour – 2,39:1 – source format: CFast 2.0 – ProRes 4444 (2.8K) – master format: 2K – release format: D-Cinema. PD: Michael T. Perry. AD: Liz Kloczkowski. Set dec: Rae Deslich. Cost: Nancy Steiner. Makeup: Angela Wells. Hair: Daniel Curet. VFX: Stewart VFX – Jeremy Cox – Mammal Studios – Emily Freund. M: composer: Anthony Willis. M supervisor: Susan Jacobs. S: Frederic Dubois. ED: Frédéric Thoraval. Casting: Mary Vernieu, Lindsay Graham-Ahanonu.
    Soundtrack listing: beyond the jump break.
    Film clip: Night of the Hunter.
    Cast listing edited in Wikipedia:
Carey Mulligan as Cassandra "Cassie" Thomas
Bo Burnham as Ryan Cooper
Alison Brie as Madison McPhee
Clancy Brown as Stanley Thomas
Jennifer Coolidge as Susan Thomas
Laverne Cox as Gail
Chris Lowell as Alexander "Al" Monroe
Connie Britton as Dean Elizabeth Walker
Adam Brody as Jerry
Max Greenfield as Joe Macklemore III
Christopher Mintz-Plasse as Neil
Sam Richardson as Paul
Alfred Molina as Jordan Green
Molly Shannon as Mrs. Fisher
Steve Monroe as Detective Lincoln Waller
Angela Zhou as Todd
Francisca Estevez as Amber
Austin Talynn Carpenter as Anastasia
Emerald Fennell as Host of Blowjob Lips Make-up Video Tutorial
    114 min (Finnkino), 113 min (IMDb, Wikipedia), 108 min (production notes).
    Loc: Los Angeles, California.
    Festival premiere: 25 Jan 2020 Sundance Film Festival.
    US premiere: 25 Dec 2020.
    Finnish premiere: 7 May 2021, released by Finnkino / Universal a Comcast company, with Finnish / Swedish subtitles by Juho Lähde / Frej Grönholm.
    Academy Award (2021, for films of 2020): Best Original Screenplay: Emerald Fennell.
    Academy Award Nominee: Best Motion Picture of the Year, Best Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role (Carey Mulligan), Best Achievement in Directing (Emerald Fennell), Best Achievement in Film Editing (Frédéric Thoraval).
    Corona security: max 6 capacity, face masks, distancing, hand hygiene.
    Viewed at a press screening at Tennispalatsi 3, Helsinki, 27 April 2021.

" Revenge is sweet, but it can spoil easily. Please don’t give away Cassie’s plans after seeing the film. "
– Statement from Emerald Fennell, writer / producer / director, Promising Young Woman

Synopsis (Production notes): " Everyone said Cassandra Thomas (Academy Award®-nominee Carey Mulligan) was a promising young woman ... until a mysterious event abruptly derailed her future. Now, she’s a medical school dropout trapped in stasis. Blonde, beautiful and blessed with a killer intellect, Cassie’s not interested in climbing the corporate ladder or marrying Mr. Right. Instead, she’s seemingly content to while away her days making lattes with her coffee shop colleague Gail (Laverne Cox), much to the profound disappointment and deep concern of her parents (Jennifer Coolidge, Clancy Brown). All they want is for their almost 30-year-old daughter to move on with her life, and to move out of their house. "

" By night, Cassie performs a ritual of her own invention. Going to bars and dance clubs alone in the wee hours, she pretends to be dangerously intoxicated, helpless to defend herself from anyone who might wish her harm. Inevitably, there’s a man who decides to make sure she gets home safely.  Yet he also inevitably lets his own desires take priority over Cassie’s well-being, not realizing that he’s simply the latest to fall prey to Cassie’s nefarious schemes—he’s about to be taught a lesson he’s unlikely to forget anytime soon. "

" But whatever small satisfaction Cassie takes from her late-night rendezvous, it isn’t enough to quell the storm of rage and sorrow inside her. Until one day, handsome pediatric surgeon Ryan (Bo Burnham), an acquaintance from her med school days, happens into the coffee shop and upends Cassie’s cycle of destruction. As she begins to develop feelings for him, she’s pulled back toward her own past and the trauma that forever changed the course of her life. "

" Will she balance the scales and find her own kind of happy ending? Or will her mission of vengeance take an unimaginable toll? " (Production notes: Synopsis).

AA: Emerald Fennell's Promising Young Woman is a disturbing revenge tragedy wrapped in ultra feminine rom com aesthetic.

It channels scenes, characters and exchanges familiar from romantic comedies but has also affinities with violent genre films: thrillers channeling female rage, horror films about avenging women and maenad dramas by Quentin Tarantino such as Kill Bill.

Most importantly, it belongs to a serious lineage of rape movies such as Alfred Hitchcock's Blackmail (the cinema's first classic account of a date rape), Jörn Donner's Manrape (a faithful adaptation of Märta Tikkanen's militant feminist novel) and Jonathan Kaplan's The Accused (with Jodie Foster playing the victim of gang rape).

Emerald Fennell won deservedly an Academy Award for her complex and multi-layered screenplay. Equally outstanding is her grip as a director on genre conventions. She adapts them imaginatively to bring a novel approach to issues that are deadly earnest.

Carey Mulligan is brilliant in the leading role. Cassandra Thomas was a top student at the medical school, but now she is happy to remain a coffeehouse barista. She leads a double life: at night she turns into a decoy, using varying outfits and disguises to attract predatory men.

The cinematographer Benjamin Kračun was influenced by the visuals of romantic comedies, adapting Panavision to a softer image and using a light from above to create a halo effect around Cassie's head. On the other hand, he consulted the colour palette of the music videos of the 1990s, including neon. To represent Cassie, he used Bleu de France.

Prominent on the soundtrack are girls' favourite pop songs of the recent decades, including Charli XCX ("Boys"), Spice Girls ("2 Become 1"), Paris Hilton ("Stars Are Blind") and Britney Spears ("Toxic").

As for the production design, Michael T. Perry created a "suburbia as designed by David Lynch". After the university tragedy, Cassie has returned to live at her parents' home, in the room where she lived as a teenager and in which apparently nothing has changed. Tellingly, her parents give her a pink suitcase as a gift for her 30th birthday.

Costume design plays a central role. Nancy Steiner has created for Cassie's wardrobe a whole array of themes and concepts for her nocturnal adventures, including a lethal nurse dress for the climactic bachelor party.

The dresses are disturbing in their sexuality. They express body consciousness with a touch of the burlesque, but their true meaning is not to objectify Cassie for the male gaze. Instead, they turn the tables for the reversal of the look when Cassie drops the drunken woman disguise.

All through the film, Cassie plays with the stripper image. The males expect her to strip her clothes. Instead, she reveals her cunning plot.

...

Promising Young Woman shares features with classic revenge tragedies such as Hamlet (the avenger is killed, there is a play within a play, madness is feigned, disguises are important).

Revenge is the opposite of justice. The obsession with revenge leads to the regression, brutalization and degeneration of the protagonist. She becomes a victim of a Wiederholungszwang, endlessly returning to the scene of the trauma.

But much more importantly, of course, the gang rape of Cassie's best friend Nina, the crime that has traumatized Cassie, is the opposite of justice, and even more the way it was processed by all eye-witnesses (who lied about it), the female dean (who swept it under the carpet) and the defense lawyer of the offender (who harassed Nina to drop charges). Horrified, Cassie and Nina dropped out, and with a video of the act circulating, Nina committed suicide.

As we know from news media, a case of a female student being raped at a top university and the rapist being left unpunished is not exceptional. Promising Young Woman is a film "about how we have all been complicit in a toxic sexist abusive culture" (Emerald Fennell).

Like in a dream, Promising Young Woman dives into the escapist world of genre cinema. But it keeps returning to reality with a vengeance.

SOUNDTRACK LISTING BEYOND THE JUMP BREAK: