Sügisball

SUGISBALL(Autumn Ball) (dir. Veiko Ounpuu) The film is a series of interconnected stories of disparate characters who live in a dreary housing complex in Tallinn, Estonia where the ugly environs amplify the emotional separation. The film's tone is one of deadpan 'Black Comedy' that communicates histrionic sadness and pent-up romantic longing that at times comes across as mildly amusing. One extremely funny segment (that had nothing to do with the movie) was where an overweight, assistant doorman impersonates Michael Jackson's music video,'Beat It'. This can only be seen to be believed and is nothing short of hysterical. Overall, the film provides very little resolution, but the film's attitude and spirit are somewhat reminiscent of Baltic directors Ingmar Bergman and Krzysztof Kieslowski.

From those lands which have been in the stronghold of the former UdSSR and where any form of creativity has been strangulated systematically, there is normally not much to await regarding advanced culture. The few Estonian films that are at present (end of 2009) available of international DVDs, are thus practically worthless. But not so Sügisball (2007). It tells, partly serially and partly parallel, the actual stories of five or six couples living in the same typically Communist tower-block where the windows must have been recently substituted but the money was lacking in order to get the isolation material into the wall. Because, in Communist times, most apartments were not rented, but owned by their tenants, we also see how different they look: starting with the poor, booth-like interior of the hairdresser, passing the roomy private-library of the writer/drinker and arriving at the fancy penthouse-stylish flat of the architect.

The people in this movie are basically potential suicides, drinkers, hopeless, betrayers and betrayed, desperate housewives, children without any clear future. We see pictures from one habitation-silo, but they are representing the basic atmosphere of a whole land at the geographical transit from East and West and at the temporal transit between Sowiet dictatorship and a boundless but insecure freedom. The style of the movie is practically a full-copy of that of Kaurismäkis films. I wonder, if the director made this decision deliberately or if there is something coming up like a "Fenno-Estonian movie-style Koine". Fact is: The Kaurismäki-style is so laconic and so light-less that by its means alone it is sufficient to describe despair and hopelessness. However, the director's decision was good. Film-style and story are "isomorphic". Finland has in the person of Aki Kaurismäki the "Finnish Fassbinder". Perhaps Estonia has gotten now in the person of Veiko Öunpuu the "Estonian Fassbinder". I would be happy for Estonia. Like all Fenno-Ugric lands, it has a grand potential of culture, history and metaphysics.

Autumn Ball (Sügisball) is first feature length film by young and talented film director Veiko Õunpuu. Autumn Ball is very surrealistically real. Pasteltones and sleepiness and soundtrack that created the mood and atmosphere. Autumn Ball is talking about different people who are all lost something and now trying to find it. It's full of complex characters.

Autumn Ball is full of great cast also who make this all possible. Rain Tolk is definitely one of the most talented young male actors in Estonia at the moment.

I can't wait Veiko Õunpuu's next film. He showed his talent in Autumn Ball. Let's hope he'll do it again.

Movies like this are easy to like. Dramatic, brutal stories told with black humor, interwoven in a way that makes it all a journey into a theme. Magnolia and Shortcuts comes to mind as great examples of this. Sügisball is a good attempt with high ambition, but sadly it fails to follow through on it.

Perhaps if the movie was a bit longer it would not be as obvious, but the characters within the stories told are all to similar. Not only in their loneliness (which, to me, seems to be the central theme of it all), but also in their situation, age, etc. I wish the stories were a bit more varied, as it would not have made the movie as dull as it was at times. But as mentioned, this could maybe have been fixed by shortening it by quite a bit.

That said, there are some great scenes in this movie, and some interesting and memorable characters.

Sugisball (2007)

For an American, this is a great insight into ordinary life in Estonia, which is one of three small countries on the western rim of the Soviet Empire, and just south of Finland on the Baltic Sea. The paths of several ordinary people, mostly young people, are interwoven in a set of vignettes that complicate as these people live very contemporary and European style lives, but with a palpable sense of oppression. It's fascinating. It's supposed to be a Soviet era apartment complex, and has the trappings of the dystopia that represents, but the people are individualistic and expressive without a feeling of repression.

What presides more clearly is a feeling of sadness and depression. Sometimes there is distrust, other times downright abuse and brutality. There is very little joy, and very little love, at least in the open way we think of it. And so because of all this the movie bristles with irritations and perceptions about the normal world. It's a slice of life, done with sensitivity. It actually reminded me of some Scandinavian films I've seen in the last decade. Another review remarks that it has a Finnish echo (I just read this after making my own point), so maybe there is something to the film industry on the fringe of Europe, not overwhelmed by American/British movies, and perhaps feeling the oppression of the Soviet era in its art scene. And there is an echo of climate and light.

A key scene, certainly, toward the end, has a submissive coatcheck man release his pent up frustrations against a highrolling patron, who happens (with a bit of irony, I'm sure) to be a director. What does he direct? "Relationship comedies." And this (because it's so impossible an idea for this world, maybe?) sends the coatchecker into a rage. It's overdone, but it's followed by an older man laughing hysterically, all by himself on his bed, and it gives a little depth to the whole enterprise.

"Sugisball" (which means Autumn Ball) doesn't really make a case for why it's valuable, or special. I mean, besides being heartfelt and nicely penetrating, and focused on something that will someday soon seem historical, there is no terrific larger point, larger than its own subject. Maybe this is enough. It's totally absorbing, with a large array of actors, most of them very convincing. There are some touching scenes, some frankly sexual ones, and everything is very everyday. It may not be transforming, but it's superb in its own way. Take it for what it is.