Turn me on!

i saw this movie in nyc for the film festival. this is one beautiful movie. i wish i could describe the beautiful, daring way the filmmakers captured the story and the scenery. it is very hard to watch movies that have good acting but this film certainly does. i couldn't believe it when the director said these actors had never done this before. i was completely surprised. funny that she also said the leading girl had not told her parents yet! very good thing it was such a wonderful job of acting or she might have been busted.

i also loved the humor, especially from the mother. I thought it was great how the sisters and friends are so ridiculous and yet sad and delightful. great job very good! thank you for being a voice that has some unique style!i hope the film will be able to play in America? are there plans for that? anymore film festivals? i also hope there is a way that i can purchase this film.

This film is definitely quite interesting. It's not appropriate as a family film, but I think the title suggests that. Much of the film carries a sexual context to it, but unlike many films and TV programmes, it's not over-the-top or unnecessary, but fits the plot appropriately.

The film manages to take one very strange, small, and extremely socially inappropriate action from one character and make an entire plot out of it. This takes a lot of creativity and I don't think I've seen that done as well as in this film. With just a few words about this film, I usually can convey enough about the entire plot to get someone interested in it.

The film also manages to present well the negative feelings some people get when they've lived in a small village for a long time. From the beginning of the film, the characters express a form of hatred for their village, which is definitely a feeling many villagers have.

Although I wouldn't say the film is one of the best I've watched, it manages to be mentioned by me a lot as "the weirdest film I've ever seen." It's definitely worth watching, especially if you're interested in something unconventional.

This film deeply effected me since I had many experiences in the same flavor as Alma as a teenager, and to this day have never seen or read anything that describes the specific pain of those years until now.

I felt that this film very clearly and artistically outlined the double-standard that still exists, even in a relatively feminist country like Norway. Even 30 years after the sexual revolution of the 1960s, it is still taboo for young girls to be fascinated by their own pleasure and sexuality, even though it is expected for boys to experiment early and often.

This film tells a tale which is rarely told so honestly, and instead of painful its gorgeous, smart and funny, set in a beautiful landscape with a dreamy soundtrack. The film is shot in lush colors, with cute humor... well, I big dose of cute (which I am typically allergic to), but this film won me over, big time.

Like any other Indie Teen Movie about Sex,"Turn Me On Dammit!" is a movie about a fifteen year old girl named Alma who's hormones are out of control and desperately wants to experience sex for the first time.

Living in a very dull small Norwegian town, Alma can only daydream about Arthur (The guy at her school she crushes on) and make calls to phone sex lines just so she can pleasure herself. Basically, her life is very mono-sexual. At a party one night, Alma finds herself suddenly alone with Arthur, who out of nowhere ends up exposing himself to her and pokes her on her thigh with it. As she under reacts in her own way though still freaked out about it, Alma makes the mistake to run off and tell her "friend" who also secretly crushes on Arthur and out of jealousy ends up telling the entire school for her own benefit. As a result Alma becomes an outcast at school and no one would talk to her. To make matters worse her mother finds out about her phone sex calls and becomes aware of Alma's sexual frustration that is out of control. As Alma does her best to live life as best as she can life closes in on her as she struggles to deal with her new found solitude.

This is a very funny and cool movie that I truly enjoyed watching. It has a great young cast, along with a very honest storyline. The cinematography is simple. The color palette on this film is superb which nicely paints a picture. Filled with an awesome score of eclectic acoustic tunes, this is truly a nice simple movie to chill out to. I personally wished it been a little longer but still works out for what it is.

Overall, don't just watch this movie expecting just to see teen sex. You'll probably be somewhat disappointed if you do. This is a movie about a teenager coping with her sexual frustration at home and finding a way to deal with her public humiliation at the same time. Give it a chance, you might just enjoy yourself. 7 out of 10

Alma is a fifteen year old girl living in Skoddeheimen, a fictional town in Norway, with her single mom and her best friend close by her side. Alma's biggest battle in her life is different from the battles we see in most young females' lives, especially in film, and it's with her raging hormones. She is beginning to become sexually awakened, and it becomes so consuming and so smothering that she can barely concentrate on anything else besides feeding her sexual desires.

And they are explicit. Writer/director Jannicke Systad Jacobsen doesn't turn Turn Me On, Dammit! into a shallow exploration of self-pleasure nor does she make it become so comedic that we laugh at the lead character, Alma (played perfectly by Helene Bergsholm) but more often wince and regard her story as depressing or possibly relatable. Her acts are not small, shoplifting pornographic magazines from the grocery store where she works and charging up a hefty bill from several phone sex lines. The opening scene even shows her in the middle of a masturbating act with the phone lying next to her.

The more definitive conflict in the film is the fact that Alma has mistaken an accidental gesture from her crush Artur (Matias Myren) as a sexually flirtatious act, bringing her embarrassment throughout her school. At home, her mother, played wonderfully by Henriette Steenstrup, becomes aware of the steps she takes to pleasure herself, but unable to process the ideas and the resources to help her combat this problem. It becomes so bad that Alma has begun to fantasize not only about being with her crush, but fantasizing about engaging in sex acts with other friends and even her boss. Again, these fantasies are not meant to provide the audience with comedy but poignant realism in the sexual awakening of young teenagers and how sometimes their thoughts are uncontrollable. At times we see the look in young Alma's eyes when she awakens from one of these fantasies and see she is not aroused by sometimes shocked and ashamed.

It was wise for Jacobsen to set her sights on a female lead. I've wearied of watching males in American films make choices for their own gain based on lust, greed, and hormones - also solely for comedic purposes. To see Turn Me On, Dammit! focus on the bitter side hormones play in the lives of teenagers in a raw form is intelligent and courageous. Had this been an American film, its subject matter most likely reduced to vast oversimplifications of the topic, the characters undeveloped and shortchanged, the depictions of steps for sexual gratification tasteless and filmed with smug undertones, and the aftertaste unremarkable and void of any truly impacting substance.

The film begins immediately, the plot and conflict turn up instantaneously, the characters quickly introduced and developed, and the film clocks in with seventy-one minutes well spent, not wasting a second in its goals to try and humanize the hormonal confusion and uncontrollable sexual tendencies of a young girl's pubescent beginnings. Turn Me On, Dammit! is something of a miracle. American cinema should begin, if not, continue to take notes from foreign cinema.

Starring: Helene Bergsholm, Henriette Steenstrup, Malin Bjørhovde, and Matias Myren. Directed by: Jannicke Systad Jacobsen.