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I guess you need either Tommi Korpela or Alma Pöysti if you want to make a Finnish movie. This one has both. That is a good start.

We have a couple who therapists/wellness gurus who are themselves on the rocks. They are heavily invested in a property they are trying to make work as a resort. They run very expensive five-day workshops for couples and we witness one of those.

Personally, I find it very unethical to have three different couples in therapy at the same time, but okay. For the movie. Fine. Except that one of them is alone. You kind of guess immediately why, but the movie tries to be coy about it for a while.

Now, the problem is that each of the couples has their own things to work through, so we have four different stories. With a two hour movie, that gives each of them roughly half and hour. Is that enough? No. So, we end up in a situation where we are kind of rushing through things and the end results don't really feel earned or organic. This constant rush also makes the editing feel pretty awkward at times.

I'm still giving this a 6/10 because I do like the performances. These were a weakness in Finnish movies for a very long time, but apparently things are getting better.

The humor is pretty dry and I did like that, but at the same time the contrast between the lighter and the darker elements just didn't work for me. They just did it clumsily. Maybe it was the editing again.

I'm 48 and I'm pretty new to punk and this can't be a common sentiment. Of course, I have always been aware of punk and even listened to it on occasion historically, but as the world has been crashing down in the last few years, I have become much more empathetic towards these ideas. (Also, the local bands always felt performative to me in my youth, as they were generally quite sexist and their anti-establishment ideas never really went very far, so that kind of put me off the genre.)

Anyway, this is a movie about ex-punks who are little bit older than I am. Dunstan Bruce, the director, was the frontman of sorts of Chumbawamba, a self-described one-hit wonder band, who were actually at that point close to disbanding after having made seven albums with no real success. Then the hit came and changed things.

...and the movie makes a lot of fun of themselves about this. They had basically sold out already. So, there's this constant presence of this figure they call The Spirit of Chumbawamba's Past. He keeps reminding Dunstan and us that the band went into a territory that was against their ideals and how they have lost those ideals in the years since, although the band members don't agree with this.

At the same time, I think the difference is that they don't perform their ideals, even if they have them. They no longer live in a ramshackle commune and they now maintain careers to live, but they do still seem to believe. It has just become harder to go out and protest or use the media to get your ideas out there, but that doesn't mean those ideas don't exist anymore.

Basically this is just self-reflection, but that's not a bad thing. We could stand to learn a bit from former punks. After all, they might not have changed the world, but they tried (and did achieve a little bit of change here and there and what more could you ask for).

It's a fine movie with an interesting premise and as a teacher I do like people thinking about who and what they are and what they want to be (or wanted to be in this case).

A man is dropping off his girlfriend at her parents' place, when he accidentally meets the dad and gets roped into spending time with the family. So, we get a series of scenes with mostly static cameras mostly having the man navigate various minefields with the family.

For those in the minuscule intersection of people interested in this and who have seen Roy Andersson's movies from his second coming, this was reminiscent of those. Not as absurd, but had the same kind of pace and dryness to the humor. Not that you can quite ever achieve full Andersson, but you know, close enough.

This is an enjoyable movie, but it definitely isn't for everyone. In fact, one of those things I wouldn't quite know who to recommend this to, even here in Finland where Andersson is quite popular in certain circles.

There are only five people in the movie and weirdly the shooting locations were credited as well. There aren't too many of those either. Mostly, they are just at the house, but some of them do visit a temple and a restaurant. Not a lot of adrenaline in there either.

Mostly, everything is just a little bit awkward. The guy is meeting with the parents for the first after dating their daughter for three years, so this is understandable, but the daughter isn't always making all of it easier either.

There is some comments on a specific lifestyle, but due to the dryness of the movie, there just isn't that much of an indication on where the movie stands on it, so you can argue that it's just making the point that this should be something to consider.