Tom of Finland | Little White Lies

Tom of Finland

09 Aug 2017 / Released: 11 Aug 2017

Man in leather jacket and cap standing in a doorway.
Man in leather jacket and cap standing in a doorway.
3

Anticipation.

Good to see a 20th century gay icon get his very own biopic.

3

Enjoyment.

A little cosy given the salacious subject matter, but competently made.

3

In Retrospect.

Tom of Finland remains a compelling enigma.

Pio­neer­ing queer artist Touko Laak­so­nen is the sub­ject of this hand­some, if slight­ly too cosy, biopic.

Dis­till­ing the entire life and lega­cy of a bona fide cul­tur­al icon into a two-hour biopic is nev­er a straight­for­ward task, but direc­tor Dome Karukos­ki stacks the odds in his favour by choos­ing a sub­ject with an espe­cial­ly colour­ful sto­ry to tell.

Tom of Fin­land con­cerns the career of Touko Laak­so­nen (Pekka Strang), who became an under­ground sen­sa­tion in the late 1950s and ear­ly 60s when his homo­erot­ic illus­tra­tions were picked up by the Amer­i­can gay inter­est mag­a­zine Physique Pic­to­r­i­al and pub­lished under the epony­mous pseudonym.

At a time when homo­sex­u­al acts were still ille­gal in many parts of Europe and the US, Laaksonen’s hyper-mas­cu­line, heav­i­ly-fetishised draw­ings had a pro­found impact on gay cul­ture, cre­at­ing a dis­tinc­tive look that was fur­ther pop­u­larised by Mar­lon Bran­do in 1953’s The Wild One – one year after Laak­so­nen first put pen­cil to paper.

With their tools, tash­es and bulging mus­cles, these leather-clad beef­cakes are said to have inspired every­one from Fred­die Mer­cury to Robert Map­plethor­pe. To Laak­so­nen, they were a per­son­al response to tra­di­tion­al depic­tions of male viril­i­ty, a con­scious appro­pri­a­tion of Nazi iconog­ra­phy stem­ming from his expe­ri­ences as an offi­cer dur­ing World War Two, which includ­ed var­i­ous sex­u­al encoun­ters with Ger­man soldiers.

Despite con­tain­ing plen­ty of bio­graph­i­cal detail, the film is fair­ly light on con­text, and accord­ing­ly it fails to place Laaksonen’s indi­vid­ual strug­gle with­in the broad­er social and polit­i­cal real­i­ty which made his work so con­tro­ver­sial and so vital – par­tic­u­lar­ly with regards to the AIDS cri­sis. Not exact­ly a deep dive into a less­er-chron­i­cled chap­ter of 20th cen­tu­ry his­to­ry, then, but a worth­while por­trait of a fas­ci­nat­ing and huge­ly influ­en­tial artist.

You might like

Accessibility Settings

Text

Applies the Open Dyslexic font, designed to improve readability for individuals with dyslexia.

Applies a more readable font throughout the website, improving readability.

Underlines links throughout the website, making them easier to distinguish.

Adjusts the font size for improved readability.

Visuals

Reduces animations and disables autoplaying videos across the website, reducing distractions and improving focus.

Reduces the colour saturation throughout the website to create a more soothing visual experience.

Increases the contrast of elements on the website, making text and interface elements easier to distinguish.