Girl Pic­ture – first-look review

Alli Haapasalo’s com­ing-of-ager is bound to receive plen­ty of com­par­isons to Books­mart. The resem­blance isn’t emp­ty; Girl Pic­ture is also an intu­itive por­trait of two young women, joined at the hip, each in pur­suit of their dif­fer­ing sat­is­fac­tion of love and sex. Haapasalo’s film diverges, how­ev­er, with its reach beyond the mid­dle-class Amer­i­can expe­ri­ence with its strik­ing plot­ting of ado­les­cence and fea­tur­ing of a les­bian sex scene that isn’t played for comedy.

Over the span of three con­sec­u­tive Fri­days, best friends for life – mis­fit Mim­mi (Aamu Milonoff), with her bleach blonde eye­brows, and Rönkkö (Eleonoo­ra Kauha­nen), with her dirty blonde coiled curls – expe­ri­ence the highs and lows of young love in all its dev­as­tat­ing­ly beau­ti­ful glo­ry. At their smooth­ie stall part-time job, the pair chop bananas while Rönkkö frets over her inabil­i­ty to enjoy sex. It is here they meet Emma (Lin­nea Leino), an ice skater bru­tal­ly train­ing for the Euro­pean cham­pi­onships and whose icy gaze makes Mim­mi weak at the knees.

Mim­mi and Emma quick­ly fall head over heels into a thrilling new romance while Rönkkö’s eager­ness for sex­u­al expe­ri­ence has her ven­tur­ing to par­ties with the inde­fati­ga­ble hope of find­ing a young man to hook up with. How­ev­er, as Emma’s train­ing amps up and Rönkkö’s sex­u­al frus­tra­tions devel­op, Mim­mi finds her­self caught in a web of ten­sion between lover and friend as each diverts on sep­a­rate paths.

Ener­getic in its pac­ing, the ela­tion of young infat­u­a­tion is cen­tred in cin­e­matog­ra­ph­er Jar­mo Kiuru’s free-mov­ing frame. Let­ting its young women exist play­ful­ly, Girl Pic­ture is a refresh­ing­ly ground­ed por­trait of for­ma­tive fem­i­nin­i­ty that strikes a care­ful bal­ance between grit­ty aes­thet­ics and sin­cere por­tray­al. At once Girl Pic­ture is Mimmi’s roman­tic dra­ma, Rönkkö’s com­ing-of-ager, and Emma’s sports thriller. The bal­anc­ing act is well dis­trib­uted if only a tad skewed towards Emma and Mimmi’s bur­geon­ing romance leav­ing Rönkkö’s nav­i­ga­tion of sex­u­al plea­sure slight­ly rushed.

In one scene, the burn­ing red of Emma’s brake lights floods an emp­ty car park as the ice-skater demon­strates her rou­tine on the tar­mac. Mim­mi stares utter­ly spell­bound. Emma’s ele­gance and Mimmi’s won­der makes for a touch­ing­ly sweet moment then a nee­dle drop of Per­fume Genius’ ​‘Slip Away’ (which is becom­ing the de fac­to sound­track for com­ing-of-age films) kicks in and if you weren’t in love, you are now.

The ten­der romance of ado­les­cent women friend­ship is also beau­ti­ful­ly penned in Daniela Haku­li­nen and Ilona Ahti’s script; sit­ting in each other’s laps, half-dressed and nose to nose Mim­mi and Rönkkö del­i­cate­ly draw eye­lin­er on one anoth­er dis­cussing sex with­out fil­ter or embar­rass­ment. Access to these pri­vate moments of con­nec­tion is grant­ed with the film’s earnest treat­ment of young women’s sex­u­al­i­ty that doesn’t become side­tracked by glossy visuals.

Nav­i­gat­ing the influx of adren­a­line and oxy­tocin surg­ing through these young women, all three actors are exquis­ite. Aamu Milonoff, in par­tic­u­lar, exe­cutes an unin­hib­it­ed but intri­cate­ly expres­sive per­for­mance. With her bob cut fram­ing her face, Milonoff allows ado­ra­tion to shine through her eyes so fever­ish­ly. Cor­ral­ing com­ing-of-age clich­es into a pen and lock­ing the gate, Haapasalo’s addi­tion to the young adult canon is remark­ably fresh, queer and a lov­able account of adolescence.