Espoon viimeinen neitsyt

I've rarely seen a funnier movie than "Espoon viimeinen neitsyt" (Suburban virgin). Unfortunately the funniness is brought on by all the wrong reasons in a movie that's probably not supposed to actually be funny.

The terrible acting, horrendous dialogue and weird characters make a great camp teenage comedy, but if the film is trying to be a serious drama piece about the life and experiments of two teenage girls, it fails miserably. Most of the time I didn't feel sympathy for the girls but rather laughed out loud at the stupidity the movie threw at me.

So if you want to laugh, watch this, but if you want to watch a serious drama, watch something else.

The film tells the story of two 16-year old (?) girls in today's Finland. One of them - Emma, played by Saila Laakkonen - is a sexually active party girl from a broken home. Her love life is far from perfect so she starts to be emotionally quite unstable. The other girl is Minna - played absolutely brilliantly by Hennariikka Laaksola - whose life has almost perfect frames. Even so - or maybe therefore - she feels the need to suffer like her best friend. Her biggest problem is she's still a virgin (hence the name "The Last Virgin of Espoo") unlike most of her friends.

The girls decide to go hitchhiking to get some distance to their families and not-so-happy surroundings. However, Minna is mainly interested in finding someone she can sleep with. She's getting desperate and aggressively makes indecent proposals to all the men the girls encounter. Unfortunately, even her best friend seems to have lower priority in her mind...

I liked this movie very much. One of the reasons is that I have seen such behavior in my friends' life about ten years ago and the film captures the Finnish teenagers' life really well. That's also the reason why this movie is so touching. It shows how the teenagers (and children) in this country are trying to grow up and behave like adults years before they should do so. These youngsters get drunk, have sex and smoke pot - and the saddest thing is they actually feel a compelling need to do so. They simply have to have as much sexual experiences as their friends do and think that a sexually transmitting decease or a criminal record is something to be jealous of. Even the children from happy families feel the need to meet these unhealthy - or even sick - standards...

This film is a marathon of teen clichés. Just one after another. The subjects range from having sex for the first time (obviously) to casual sex and the painfully obvious suicide.

Worst thing about this movie is the script. The dialogue's just horrible while the film in whole doesn't come up with a single original idea.

Plus, this has clearly been made with educational purposes in mind.. the dos and don'ts for kids. In fact, they should've just renamed this piece of junk "Teenage for Dummies".

The two starring girls try to do their best with a crappy material, but in the end it isn't even nearly enough to keep this a float, 'cause their characters are stupid and irritating (God help us, if this is an accurate portrait of our youth!). Watching this, you WANT them to catch a venereal disease. Of the deadly kind.

If you absolutely must watch some teen soap, catch a re-run of Dawson's Creek or Beverly Hills 90210. Because this almost makes American Pie look like a Tarantino outing.

* / *****