I expected a lot from this documentary as I had heard many hailing opinions about it, especially from representatives of the Finnish Film Foundation and Finnish AVEK which were the main backers of the film. Even though I had read that Honkasalo made only one brief shooting trip to Checnya for this documentary (Anna Politkovskaja made more than 60 trips for her fatal honest writing) I had full trust in the content of it.
Unfortunately I have to confess that I was terribly disappointed with The Three Rooms of Melancholia. The only thing that made me smile was the view of the end credits and the fact that I had been smart enough to borrow the tape for free. It was really hard to watch this over-pretentious film, cause it was so dreadfully boring due to its contrived and hopelessly thick and artificial feeling of fake melancholy. A gray lifeless sentiment the director Pirjo Honkasalo holds lazily onto throughout the film, arrogantly ignoring the audience natural need for at least some occasional change in the mood.
Despite this complete failure, I think Pirjo Honkasalo's next film Pattaya Go! Go! - currently in the cooker with one of the funniest documentary directors in Scandinavia and with the Finnish Dokumenttikilta association - will become a very thought-provoking and different kind of documentary. In the name of art and entertainment Pirjo Honkasalo will together with her creative allies boldly tell the true story of a group of freshly sacked Finnish paper mill workers' shameless sex trip to Pattaya in Thailand.
