Girl Picture

A rather frank Finish feature of girls deciphering hormonal urges as they mature into adulthood. The matter of fact sex talk is blunt, refreshing, insightful and often funny, as director Alli Haapasalo avoids the sensationalistic and exploitative Hollywood pratfalls of bedroom romps. These are kids, experimenting, exploring, learning, fumbling, growing and most importantly, discussing. A talkie, not a humpy.

Mimmi and Ronkko swap sex tales whilst serving up ridiculously named smoothies ("It Takes Two To Mango") at the local food court, when clique preppie figure skater Emma disrupts their world. The punky, cynical and rebellious Mimmi (Aamu Milonoff) argues with, then falls for the forbidden fruit, and we have story. A story that feels natural, flows true, views like a diary.

Milonoff is sensational in the lead, owning the screen at every emotional turn: burning embarrassment at her mother's neglect, seducing her target on the dance floor, and lashing out physical for attention. Though this is a three girl story across three Friday nights, and Haapasalo splits the plot pie in equal portions, Milonoff as Mimmi steals the show. "Girl Picture" is her movie.

Watch out!

• hipCRANK.

This film depicts three affluent European high school girls in the middle of some coming of age issues - I would not go so far as to call it problems.

The structure and the feel is a derivative of the Norwegian Internet series SKAM, which was made on a string budget with authentic real aged teenagers.

In SKAM, characters were balanced, multi layered and above all believable, while the characters here are quite shallow and, for that matter, portrayed by over age women. This gives it a somewhat awkward feeling at times, especially when it comes to portraying first sexual encounters. It is worth noting that Aamu Milonoff is 23, Eleonoora Kauhanen is 24 and Linnea Leino is 30 when the "girls" keep on experiencing these first (random) sexual encounters and discuss them on their job in a fruit juice stand, usually right after high school classes.

There is an abundant supply of cliches, like singing to random music playing on the car stereo while driving to parties or bouncing around each other in luxury apartments like happy young kittens.

All characters, even more so the male characters, feel constructed with a need to cover cliches. For the sake of comedy this is okay and at times it is entertaining. Anything beyond that feels contrived. The teenage love stories do not have the kind of pull that some teenagers actually feel when they are in it, thinking they experience the end of the world.

There is a lot of sexuality in this film that obviously comes from teenagers watching too much pornography. While it is true that European teenagers are highly exposed to pornography, portraying this issue with over aged actresses playing teenagers recreates a feeling of sexual exploitation that was declared as the arch enemy in feminist film making. In this aspect the film has failed. It could have been a chance to authentically rewrite the way teenage girls are portrayed in modern cinema.

A preview for the story is that 3 teenager girls are trying to find their sexual needs , learn about sex , how to manage a relationship and lastly find themselves and keep their friendship together.

Don't jump into the movie thinking with a huge storyline, however with a short and great story .

What I loved about this film is the actresses that play the three protagonists. Their characters are great and pretty good written . I was always wanted a Finnish film like this . It's a great addition to the Finnish movie industry and its surely great. If you are learning Finnish it will surely help you , you won't learn much about the Finnish culture but you might experience a little bit about the teenger Finnish culture. I loved every second of this film, its pretty smooth and the story its well good written , I hope we can see more in the Finnish film industry.

Lastly, I wanted to talk about that the teen life it portrays maybe its not the best but its good enough. I am not Finnish and I Don't really know what is like or if its exactly like that. Great shots from the film .

Told over a trio of Friday evenings, this follows the story of three lifelong pals who are entering the exciting new world of adulthood and discovering things about their bodies and themselves that director Alli Haapasalo has knitted into one hundred minutes of light-hearted drama. "Mimmi" (Aamu Milonoff) and the figure skating-obsessed "Emma" (Linnea Leino) have always been joined at the hip and appear destined to take their relationship to the next level, whilst "Rönkkö" (Eleoonora Kauhanen) is more into finding out just to get her juices (quite literally) flowing. What now ensues sees these three girls go through some of the turbulence of adolescence, exploring their sexuality and questioning their priorities as they go - whilst causing some mayhem with the equally hormonal boys whom "Rönkkö", especially, seems to manage to frustrate at every turn as she rather methodically searches for her own "tingle". It's quite a quirkily coming of age sort of story, this, with a candidness to it that is quite refreshing at times. It's not often that we get films that deal with the feminine side of the coin when it comes to initial sexual encounters - some more successful than others. The writing and acting, though, is all rather underwhelming and it loves a stereotype as it's initial innovation gives way to an Hollywood-esque sisterhood exercise that can be quite cringemaking to watch at times. There's something entirely superficial about the whole thing and after half an hour I just felt that we were being presented with a series of scenarios straight (or not) from the teenage pop-up Kamasutra. It's not bad and at times is quite revealing of attitudes and that physical passion we all felt in our teens, but that quickly gives way to the routine and it loses it's punch.

Originally premiered at the 2022 Sundance Film Festival for the World Dramatic Competition selection. I originally brought tickets for this movie during the virtual festival but after watching 30 minutes of the movie, I turned it off because I was tired. However, the festival ended the next day as I got caught off from my schedule so I wasn't able to finish the movie. Recently, I found another screening at another festival so I rewatched it again. Was it worth it? Sort of.

Directed by Alli Haapasalo and its a story about three girls name Mimmi, Emma and Rönkkö who are at the cusp of womanhood, trying to draw their own contours. During three consecutive Fridays, two of them experience the earth moving effects of falling in love, while the third goes on a quest to find something she's never experienced before: pleasure. Finland cinema isn't common from where I am so it was nice to see a movie from Finland. The presentation is really good as the 1:33:1 aspect ratio did feel purposeful for the most part. Trying to capture the theme where the girls are stuck in their youth still while trying to grow out of it soon. The chemistry between the characters were mostly interesting however some felt like there could be some improvements. Each performances from the cast is pretty good as there wasn't a single weak performance from the actors. The nice production design and pacing helped to make the movie feel wholesome and fun to watch throughout.

Most of the characters have their purpose but some felt like they are just there for the plot honestly. Nothing too special that comes out from the story. It's the average basic story about an coming of age story on girls. The musical choice honestly gets annoying as the song called "Slip Away" from the band Perfume Genius is over played at this point. That song has been played since Eighth Grade and Booksmart which fits perfectly, but now its kind of over used which is annoying. Some of the dialogue could be improved since some of the words did feel like something Jaden Smith would make from a bad record album. Despite these problems, the movie never fails to become boring and there are some wholesome moments to connect with our main three characters. Good job for the effort.

Rating: B-