TheEmperorsBride

Having read raving reviews about 'Miesten vuoro' (Steam of Life), which reportedly has reduced many viewers to tears, I expected much from this hauntingly beautiful documentary about Finnish masculinity, the sauna culture, and male vulnerability. The movie delivered everything I expected from it, and more; it's a gripping, genuinely moving portrayal of the sensitive side of rough men who have been raised to hide their emotions.

The concept is rather simple; a variety of ordinary Finnish men talking about highly emotional moments of their lives in saunas. The men represent various different age groups and occupations, but in the context of the film their roles in the society are almost irrelevant. In the sauna, the men shed their clothes, social masks, and inhibitions, and bare the true, raw emotions behind their tough exteriors. Clothes and occupations can only tell so much about a person. The bare, life-shaped bodies of these men - some old and some young, some fat and some skinny, some well-built and others filled with scars - say so much more. And beneath both their clothes and their skins, the men are very much alike.

The stories the men tell vary between heart-warming and heart-breaking; they talk about parenthood and childhood, of friendship and marriage, of birth and of death. Many of the men talk about their children, and for me both the tragic and the happy stories of fatherhood stood out as the most touching scenes of the movie.

It's very difficult to make a movie about such an emotional subject matter without being overly sentimental, but 'Miesten vuoro' manages to do just that. The scenes are very intimate, but also properly aloof. The beautiful score and gorgeous images of the rough wilderness and snowy cities support the emotional content perfectly without drenching the movie in needless sap. There are also splashes of tender humour scattered around the film, which makes it vibrant and balanced.

There's something cathartic about watching the men open up, reveal their emotions, and wash themselves. It doesn't take a genius to point out the metaphorical connection between emotional and physical purification through bathing and talking. It's like a religious rite; in 'Miesten vuoro', the sauna is a place of meditation for men who cannot bare their hearts anywhere else.

Saippuaprinssi is a movie about the timid Ilona (Tola) - an amateur wannabe-actress, who incidentally joins the writing staff of a popular daytime soap opera, and falls in love with the hunky star of the show, Kalle (Leppilampi). She soon discovers two things about Kalle: he is a genuinely talented actor who does not enjoy acting in the trashy show, and he's secretly romantically involved with the head writer of the show - the iron-willed Raakel (Mäenpää). To steal her new beloved from the claws of the harpy-like Raakel, Ilona puts her writing skills into action to make Kalle's character in the series prefer a character who resembles her over a character who resembles Raakel. Raakel answers fire with fire, and soon a war occurs between the two rivaling women, with the battle taking place both in the fictional world of the soap opera and in the real one. Evidently, there is room for only one strong woman both in Kalle's heart, and on the set of the series, which becomes wackier and wackier as the war between Ilona and Raakel progresses.

Aside from Mäenpää's marvelous comedic performance as the monstrous Raakel and a hilarious subplot involving a group of young over-the-top avant-garde thespians, there's not much I can say for the movie's advantage. The premise sounds delicious, but the execution is disappointing. Not only is the movie simply unfunny and essentially one-layered, the plot suffers from basic-level technical mistakes like incoherence and plain messiness. The worst thing about the movie is that, due to the shoddy writing, the main characters come off plain dislikable, when they should be genuinely agreeable in order to make the audience give a damn.

Take the leading lady of the movie, Ilona, for an example. The audience is apparently supposed to side with her, even though she comes off as a self-righteous, self-contradicting hypocritical person, who thinks she has a right to meddle with Kalle's life simply because she has a crush on him, and accuses Raakel of being possessive and controlling when she's doing the exact same thing herself. Why should the audience root for her - or for Kalle, who comes off as a spineless idiot who can't even live his own life? Naturally, a love story between characters like these can't be interesting or likable - especially since the movie never shows why these two like each other to begin with, and why the audience should care. The relationship is never fully developed, which is why Ilona's sudden demand to steal Kalle from Raakel by any means possible seems just intrusive and unreasonable.

Interestingly enough, the only character I found relatable and likable in the movie was the main antagonist, Raakel. Thanks to the acting skills of the superb Outi Mäenpää, who makes the character both funny and slightly vulnerable, Raakel has more character and depth to her than Ilona and Kalle have combined. So again, why should the audience prefer the phony Ilona and the whiny Kalle over this strong, witty woman who at least is shown having credible reasons for doing the things she does, as questionable as they might be? Furthermore, I do not like the way the movie pits the middle-aged Raakel against the twenty-something Ilona and makes them fight over the same guy, as though to indicate that when an older woman dates and dominates a younger man, she's a possessive she-devil, but when a younger woman does the same thing, she's just in love. Really, Raakel and Ilona treat Kalle exactly the same way, so the only thing that marks the difference between the heroine and the villainess is the age difference. So, what? Age does matter? Men shouldn't date older women? People in general shouldn't date people who are slightly older than them? Strong middle-aged women are bad? I know I'm probably reading too much into this, but what else was I supposed to think? Disregarding the whole likability factor, the character development is overall rather lousy, and even illogical. For example, Ilona starts off as a timid wallflower, and then she suddenly turns into a confident young woman (complete with the classic "from glasses to contacts" transformation) in the middle of the movie, and yet the change is never directly shown, nor gradually indicated. It just happens. Overall, both Ilona and Kalle remain so distant to the viewer that it's virtually impossible to care about either one, whether they're together or apart. And because of that, it's very difficult to care about the movie in general.

So, in a nutshell, 'Saippuaprinssi' was a huge disappointment to me. The idea sounded clever, but it's not funny, the characters are not likable enough, and the plot is just all over the place. It's trying to be like a Hollywood-like romantic comedy, but it lacks all the technical requirements and genuine charm of the aforementioned. I wish they'd stop trying to incorporate Hollywood storytelling and cinematic conventions into Finnish cinema, because it just doesn't work. It only looks awkward.

At the time of its release, 'Tyttö sinä olet tähti' was considered an event in the small world of Finnish cinema. Dome Karukoski, the then-unknown young director was praised both for the movie's refreshing and contemporary look, and for the well-constructed and coherent storytelling. Some critics went even as far as dubbing it "the best Finnish movie ever made!" - which I personally consider a major overstatement. The movie does have its merits, but overall it's simply a harmless, yet a very commercial and a hopelessly mediocre film with nothing new to it, except a) it's a Finnish movie portraying the urban youth of contemporary Finland - a refreshing oddity in a field of cinema dominated by movies about the everyday problems of disillusioned thirty-somethings - and b) the use of r'n'b/hip hop music - a genre of music rarely seen or heard in Finnish cinema - on the soundtrack and as an essential part of the story.

The movie tells the story of young Nelli (Pamela Tola) - a classic, beautiful "good girl" from a wealthy family - who dreams of becoming an r'n'b singer, although her family expects her to pursue a career in law instead. To realize her dream, Nelli teams up with Sune (Samuli Vauramo) - a member of a semi-underground hip-hip group, who initially refuses both Nelli, whose taste of music he deems too commercial, and a record deal with a major music label to stay true to his artistic vision and street cred. Eventually, though, a fruitful professional, as well as a budding romantic, relationship occurs between Nelli and Sune, who spend their summer together composing and recording tracks for Nelli's demo album. But alas, love between the two could-be lovers seems impossible, because Nelli already has a serious boyfriend, and her parents are thrilled by neither Sune, nor the idea of Nelli abandoning a steady future for a potential career in music.

So basically, this is light romantic teen drama/comedy by numbers. The plot is just about as basic as it gets from its overused scenario all the way down to its predictable plot twists (= good girl meets a bad boy, obstacles stand in the way of their unexpected love, blah blah blah, and the viewer starts contemplating suicide), and there isn't even a proper gimmick to the film to jazz the clichés up a little bit - apart from the fact that the story takes place in Finland instead of the USA. Many of the much-hyped aspects of this movie - such as the refreshingly natural dialogue, the portrayal of the r'n'b/hip hop scene of Finland, and the coherence of the plot - only pass as something noteworthy when judged by the standards of commercial Finnish cinema (as it was by the time of the movie's premiere). Compared to other recent domestic hits, 'Tyttö sinä olet tähti' was an original, high-quality film - which says much, much more about the quality of commercial Finnish cinema of the time than about the quality of the film itself. Taken out of the aforementioned context, it's just mediocre, clichéd and kind of boring as well.

Nevertheless, the movie is not completely without charm. Much of it owes to the modest charisma of the young stars Pamela Tola and Samuli Vauramo, who both bring delightful warmth to the simple characters they play, making their subtle on-screen romance likable enough to keep the viewer emotionally invested in it, despite its unoriginality. Also, even though the movie follows religiously the conventions of Hollywood cinema, the general feel of the film is genuine enough not to give you the impression that the movie is vaguely trying to imitate life as it's portrayed in commercial American movies - a common mistake a lot of commercial Finnish movies seem to make ('Saippuaprinssi', I'm looking at you!) - instead of vaguely trying to imitate life itself. But it's still just not enough - certainly not enough of an excuse for telling a story that has been told a thousand times before without bringing anything new and original to it.

'Tyttö sinä olet tähti' is a harmless little film which is bound to entertain the casual (and bored) viewer, but I still don't think that it deserves half of the credit it was showered with when it was released. It's not exactly a crime against mankind, but it's tremendously commercial, unimaginative, and predictable - which is ironic, because the "bad guys" of this movie are the greedy pigs of the commercial record label who try to force all the originality out of Sune and Nelli to make them appeal to the masses. Personally, I did not feel like the makers of this movie were honestly trying to tell me a story, because the plot was so clichéd. It just mildly distracted me for a moment - and that's just not the highest function a movie should have.