Films that provide a mere backdrop for a meditation on a theme are not to everyone's taste. Sometimes, however important the theme, the on-screen activity is insufficient to hold our interest. Although the lives of the characters in Tuning are fairly mundane, the puzzling juxtaposition of images and only the tiniest of clues help keep us on our toes. This is a slow, dislocated, observational work, though not exactly engrossing unless you ask a lot of questions.
Peter seems happily enough married, yet we see him with a call-girl and also realise he may be hankering after an old schoolmate. His wife is receiving slightly flirtatious messages on her cellphone. A loving father, Peter is haunted by his approaching middle age. He is receding and his face is getting podgy. In one sex scene, the camera shows only Peter's face as he pumps away - he looks particularly unappealing. His wife Katarina, who works in publishing, is miserable when no-one is looking. Each of their daughters is trying to find their best aspirations in spite of the inadequacy and mundaneness of their parents' lives - one in her feelings for a boyfriend that she doesn't want to tell her parents much about, the other through piano lessons, at which she excels. The repetitive, tinkling piano in the soundtrack is like the purity of an ideal ignored. We see the distances between the family members, mostly without explanation of why they do not get on well beneath the superficial happiness they project to the world.
At work, Katarina comes across a book of poems called 'Closenesses,' and is struck by the beauty of the title. At one point, without it being clear where her suspicions come from, she goes relentlessly through her husbands pockets and belongings. In another scene, the daughter tickles her mum lovingly with a blade of grass - a simple gesture we cannot but help wish Peter would have made. They go to a friend's gallery exhibition that comprises enormous photos of a hymen. They go to their daughter's school concert together. The piano tuner calls and adjusts their daughter's instrument.
The array of clues are not so much clues on how the story will develop but what it is more essentially about, and the insights suggested concerning a state of marriage. Sometimes things have to get worse before they get better - if only to provide comparison by means of wrong notes. The degree of intimacy (or lack of it) in each of the scenes of sexual congress give one of the most potent indications of emotional disharmony or its absence. The ultimate achievement of Tuning is maybe not the linear storyline but the providing of a basis within which we can see what is important yet inexpressible; achieving this by depicting the adjacent surrounding details that are expressible, if themselves unimportant.
