Mark Reviews Movies: GIRL PICTURE

Girl Picture, Strand Releasing

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Review by Mark Dujsik | August 11, 2022

There's an admirable messiness to the characters of Girl Picture. They're a trio of older teenagers, each of them experiencing a series of distinct firsts in their lives. One has fallen in love for the first time. Another is rebelling against the only kind of life she has known. The last is trying to have her first pleasurable experience with sex. None of this is easy, and the filmmakers acknowledge and embrace that difficulty and a sense of uncertainty that, for these characters, will surely go on beyond the confines of this story.

The screenplay, written by Ilona Ahti and Daniela Hakulinen, takes place somewhere in Finland over three consecutive Fridays (and one Saturday) in the lives of these not-quite-women but surely not-exactly-girls. Mimmi (Aamu Milonoff) and Rönkkö (Eleonoora Kauhanen) are best friends, who are frank and honest with each other about everything. They attend the same school, where Mimmi regularly gets into trouble with her attitude, and work at the same smoothie shop in mall.

Almost as a joke, the two are invited to a party being thrown by some popular classmates. While Rönkkö has to convince her friend to attend, it's Mimmi who benefits the most from the party. She gets to talk to and spend time with Emma (Linnea Leino), a figure skater training for a European competition. Mimmi had mocked Emma earlier at the smoothie counter, seemingly out of nervousness (She and Rönkkö were talking about love at first sight just before Mimmi seems dumbstruck by Emma's presence), but by the time the next Friday arrives, the two are dating.

Meanwhile, Rönkkö wants the same sort of passion her friend has with Emma. She starts looking for it at a variety of places, but it might have been in front of her—awkwardly asking her out at the smoothie counter—the whole time. Maybe it's never that simple, though.

Director Alli Haapasalo follows these teens in their romantic and/or uncomfortable adventures, while also giving us a sense of how and why these connections are as strong or tenuous as they are—or could be in the long run. Emma's life, which previously had revolved only around skating, is the most detailed, as she starts being late for practice and questioning her desire to skate (The pressure, coming almost exclusively from her drive, is starting to wear her thin), but there's also Mimmi's relationship with her mother, who lives elsewhere, has another family now, and seems to forget that her elder child even exists. Rönkkö home life is overlooked, or that absence might be the entire point of her hunt for an instantly deep connection with another person.

The film is entirely about these characters and how they navigate the trials of love, commitment, and sex. Girl Picture allows us to see these three as richly detailed but still incomplete people, and there's real compassion in observing how they find themselves and why their connection to each other is so vital.

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