Dis­cov­er the fem­i­nist sub­text of this Finnish folk horror

“A lot goes on here that south­ern­ers don’t under­stand,” a local informs an out­sider who fan­cies that the white rein­deer cur­rent­ly plagu­ing the village’s male pop­u­lace can be stopped sim­ply with a mod­ern rifle. Giv­en that the his­toric set­ting is Lap­land in the north­ern­most part of Fin­land, most view­ers too are south­ern­ers here, and will be unfa­mil­iar with the par­tic­u­lars of local cul­ture, reli­gion and mythol­o­gy – ensur­ing that Erik Blomberg’s The White Rein­deer, though as sim­ple in its nar­ra­tive as it is stark in its snowy loca­tions, comes with a great deal of lumi­nous, numi­nous mystery.

The film begins with a Sámi folk song about a ​“lit­tle girl, child of Lap­land, born in a snow­drift… she did not know as a child, nor when she was mar­ried, that she was born a witch, evil in her bel­ly.” In fact the song sets out the entire sto­ry of Piri­ta (played by Blomberg’s co-writer and wife Mir­ja­mi Kuos­ma­n­en), and the film then realis­es this folk leg­end at greater length as an ethno­graph­ic study of sorts, filled with care­ful­ly observed region­al prac­tices and rituals.

In a vil­lage rein­deer race, Piri­ta eas­i­ly proves the match of Aslak (Kaler­vo Nis­silä), ensur­ing that their sub­se­quent mar­riage ought to be a rela­tion­ship of equals – although we note the dowry, paid to Pirita’s father, that reduces the young woman to a trans­ferrable com­mod­i­ty. With Aslak away for weeks at a time herd­ing rein­deer on the fells, Piri­ta is left at home to her own devices. In an attempt to stave off her bore­dom and yearn­ing, Piri­ta vis­its Tsalkku-Nil­la (Arvo Lehes­maa), the village’s drunk­en shaman. His instruc­tions, com­bined with her hid­den witchy nature, lead her to be trans­formed into a shapeshift­ing deer that seduces, and then preys upon, male hunters.

Piri­ta may be a temptress, a vam­pire and a meta­mor­phic mon­ster, but she is also sym­pa­thet­ic, strug­gling for empow­er­ment, and a place for her own desires, amid an army of ogling male suit­ors deter­mined to sub­due her. She will even­tu­al­ly be brought down by her own hus­band, armed as he is with a phal­lic spear of cold iron.

If Pirita’s attacks are sex­u­alised (all her vic­tims are men), the order that is restored to this com­mu­ni­ty is a point­ed­ly mas­cu­line one. Yet styled from the very out­set as a ​“child of Lap­land”, Piri­ta rep­re­sents a pri­mal, pagan ani­mal spir­it of the nation (and of a mar­gin­alised cul­ture). A fem­i­nine spir­it resis­tant to the encroach­ment of Chris­tian­i­ty and of more patri­ar­chal val­ues. The tam­ing of her – an alle­go­ry of Sámi his­to­ry – is as much tragedy as triumph.

The colour white dom­i­nates every­thing in this bright­ly-lit mono­chrome film, con­jur­ing the cin­e­mat­ic purism of Carl Theodor Drey­er. Yet impu­ri­ties are also allowed to intrude, whether south­ern influ­ences or adul­ter­ous stray­ings or the stain of mur­der, dis­rupt­ing the film’s back­ward-look­ing idyll and dark­en­ing its lus­trous sheen. If there is a cer­tain naïveté to The White Rein­deer, that is an intrin­sic part of its style, evoca­tive pre­cise­ly for its plain, arche­typ­al nature. The traces left in the snow by Piri­ta may be easy to fol­low but, abstract and enig­mat­ic, they are not, after all, so easy to understand.

The White Rein­deer is released by Eure­ka Enter­tain­ment as part of The Mas­ters of Cin­e­ma Series in a Dual-For­mat Blu-ray/D­VD edi­tion, pre­sent­ed from a new 4K restora­tion on 8 April.