It’s a tale as old as time. Boy meets girl. Girl beats boy. Girl tries to extract boy’s tooth with pliers...
OK, so pretty much everything about Jukka-Pekka Valkeapaa’s Finnish drama is surprising and its protagonist is actually a man — Juha (Pekka Strang), a widower who resembles a cross between Daniel Craig and a streak of p***.
Juha’s wife died in a horrible drowning incident and he has been numbly raising their only child, Elli (Ilona Huhta). One day, as Elli gets her tongue pierced, something penetrates Juha’s emotional fog.
Dominatrix Mona (an androgynous Krista Kosonen) enjoys treating men as if they were naughty pups, and is willing to hurt Juha. When she strangles him, our hero feels happy. So happy, in fact, that at work he starts skipping down the corridors. He’s a heart surgeon and colleagues begin to worry that he has lost it (they delicately ask him, “Are all your Moomins in the valley?”) You may wonder too.
The script takes all sorts of twists. The changes of pace and mood feel natural, and even when things get heavy, it’s funny. Some viewers will groan with pleasure, some pain.
Available at curzonhomecinema.com
