All three girls are superb, but Milonoff’s Mimmi is the star. Her best friend and her girlfriend/lover are satellites in her universe. And she is perfect, giving a beautifully grounded yet magical performance. The kind that makes you sit up and take notice. The kind that makes you put her name on your cellphone.
Alli Haapasalo’s “Girl Picture” (the excellent screenplay is by Daniela Hakulinen and Ilona Ahti) washes over you like a breath of cinematic fresh air. Focusing on three young women in their late teens/early twenties on three consecutive Fridays, it treats life as a gift to be savored without ever shying away from disappointments and heartache.
Mimmi (Aamu Milonoff), and Rönkkö (Eleonoora Kauhanen), are best friends who both work part-time at a juice shop – an homage to Linda (Phoebe Cates) and Stacy (Jennifer Jason Leigh), the valley girls in Amy Heckerling’s 1982 movie “Fast Times at Ridgemont High.” They talk about their bodies, their relationships, their families, and their sexual escapades in a way that is frank yet endearing. Their most passionate opinions are always delivered in English, which peppers their Finnish dialogue like a series of Wildean epigrams. And, being young adults, they both have enough cynicism to make any approaching customer a potential victim.
One of these is Emma (Linnea Leino), a budding and highly disciplined skater who, fussing over the number of calories in every smoothie on the menu, incurs Mimmi’s wrath. But then something extraordinary happens! Mimmi and Emma fall madly in love! Meanwhile, Rönkkö, who has yet to get any pleasure out of sex and thinks she may be asexual, is exploring her single-girl world. This leads to a few embarrassing and funny situations.
All three girls are superb, but Milonoff’s Mimmi is the star. Her best friend and her girlfriend/lover are satellites in her universe. And she is perfect, giving a beautifully grounded yet magical performance. The kind that makes you sit up and take notice. The kind that makes you put her name on your cellphone.
The screenwriters, the director, and the cast never comment on Mimmi’s and Emma’s relationship. It’s treated as just another relationship that happens to be gay in a forest of heterosexual ones. Cheers!
65 Queer Films Made Under the Hays Code (1934-1967) Part One. – TheBrownees
65 Queer Films Made Under the Hays Code (1934-1967). Part Two. – TheBrownees
65 Queer Films Made Under the Hays Code (Table) – TheBrownees
45 Queer Films from 1967-1976: Queer Cinema Comes Out – TheBrownees
