Girls Girls Girls

Three Finnish girls on the cusp of young womanhood have their lives intersect over three subsequent Fridays. Dividing a mucosa well-nigh trendy girlhood in this way makes perfect sense, as when you’re 17, the things that matter most only seem to happen over the weekend.

Mimmi (Aamu Milonoff) is confident yet cynical and boisterous, letting on that she’s too tomfool to superintendency well-nigh much. She and her endearing, curly-haired ride-or-die pal, Rönkkö (Eleonoora Kauhanen), both work part-time at a smoothie kiosk in the middle of a shopping centre, and invite themselves to popular kids’ house parties with a view to finding potential sex partners.

Rönkkö doesn’t really know what she likes and is unimaginable well-nigh her prospects at overly having satisfying sex because, so far, her experiences have been lacklustre. While she’s having a mediocre encounter in the washroom at a suburban house party, Mimmi encounters Emma (Linnea Leino), a high-strung icon skating prodigy/popular girl xerox who has defended her unshortened life to the ice rink.

The thrill of witchery and infatuation between the whimsical Mimmi and a increasingly svelte Emma is captured perfectly by Jarmo Kiuru’s cinematography: the narrow 1.33:1 speciality ratio lends the dynamically-shot picture an intimate portraiture that gains its texture through soft tones and a warm colour palette.

As Emma gradually begins to requite in to the newfound, debaucherous pull of partying and dating, the relationship that starts to take shape between her and Mimmi veers into predictable territory and rote cliché (‘Slip Away’ by Perfume Genius is rhadamanthine somewhat of a staple needle waif for the genre). Increasingly importantly, though, their relationship is explored casually and without an ounce of sensationalism, authentically capturing the overdramatic intensity and upturned ravages of what romance feels like at such a tender age.

Logistically, this ways that Rönkkö’s storyline is often relegated to the sidelines of a narrative that’s mostly focused on the connection between the other two. Although the mucosa isn’t declarative of Rönkko’s sexual identity, asexual viewers are likely to resonate with her journey. Her seemingly heteronormative trajectory and pursuit for sexual pleasure are mired in a lack of fulfillment, making such readings pertinent.

It’s rare for talkie to depict a potentially asexual weft as empathetically as director Alli Haapasalo does here, with just the right value of uncertainty to circumvent gratuitous representation discourse. Haapasalo uses warmth, respect and empathy as her modus operandi, permitting her trio to wade through the liminal cusp of womanhood – no longer teenagers, yet not quite young adults – as they search for meaning through friendships, fleeting situationships, and budding romantic connections. Unshackled from shame, they are unreservedly self-ruling to plunge into their respective journeys of self-exploration and growth, to wits life and not have everything figured out.

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