A MOMENT IN THE REEDS

Finland, 2017, 108 minutes, Colour.
Janne Puustinen, Boodi Kabbani, Mika Melender
Directed by Mikko Makela.

This is a slow-burning film from Finland, a film presenting a gay perspective on relationships, paralleling films with heterosexual relationships, establishing characters, emotions, attraction, relationship itself, tensions…

The central character is a young man who has escaped Finland and the pressures from his father to study literature, Finnish poetry as well as Baudelaire, in Paris. He has almost finished when he returns for a few days to help his father renovate the family summerhouse before he sells it.

The father is of the old school, severe in his attitude towards his son, disapproving of his orientation, harsh on his artistic wife who left him and is now dead. Even on the day he arrives back home, the son has to help his father with the work of renovation – and that is certainly not his forte. The young man intends to return to Paris and to complete his studies and probably never to return to Finland.

However, his father has consulted an agency and has employed a worker who turns out to be a former architect from Syria, who does not speak Finnish, but is very good at his tasks.

For the first 45 minutes of the film, the screenplay builds up the relationship between father and son in their tensions, the arrival of the worker, the father’s initial hostility to a foreigner, a Muslim, especially when he doesn’t speak Finnish. However, he appreciates his work.

The audience can see that the screenplay wants to build up a rapport between the worker and the son and, after a period in the sauna, chatting, listening to music, the affair begins. There are several more explicit scenes throughout the film.

However, the emphasis is on the emotions of the two men, their love for each other, shared interests, companionship – and the growing hostility of the father.

The Syrian receives a phone call indicating that his family wants to come to Finland and he finds he does not want to begin again, but wants to make Finland his country while the young man clearly wants to leave it behind.

There are many lyrical moments, sunsets and clouds, the two men in a boat on the lake, the dramatisation of fondness and intimacy.

The only other character in the film occurs when the son drives into town to buy something and finds a woman who remembers him from the past as well as his father – but he discovers that the town has closed down.

This is a film which audiences with a gay orientation will appreciate – and is a well written and acted opportunity for other orientations to appreciate relationships, love.