All three girls are superb, but it is Milonoff’s Mimmi who is the star. Her best friend and her girlfriend/lover are satellites in her universe. And she is exceptionally good, 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 in your cellphone.
Alli Haapasalo’s “Girl Picture” (the wonderful 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 the disappointments and the 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 impassioned 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 wonderful 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 it is Milonoff’s Mimmi who is the star. Her best friend and her girlfriend/lover are satellites in her universe. And she is exceptionally good, 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 in your cellphone.
Mimmi’s and Emma’s relationship is never commented on by the screenwriters, the director, or the cast. It’s treated as just another relationship that happens to be gay in a forest of heterosexual ones. Cheers!
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