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*scratches head*
I really wanna write something about Tove but my brain is just... all over the place, and I'm not sure where to start. Like, I don't necessarily want to review it, because it's a movie I connected with emotionally very strongly, and stylistically it's one of those movies where I'm likelier to comment on the technical and cinematographical merit than whether or not I found it good, and also the whole "connected strongly emotionally" part makes it hard for me to judge the performances? Like, this movie really worked for me, as someone who self-admittedly doesn't really like drama -- it could have been a preachy, ponderous mess but it retained enough lightness and whimsy to shake out to being like "even serious things are kind of absurd", a sentiment I just. Wholly feel, down into my bones.
(Similarly, the movie being very "private" and the public being mostly in the background and in the foley was nice.)
But, like, as a queer who's made my own fair share of jokes about how when you come out as a Finnish bisexual, Tove Jansson visits your dream to bless you, I was definitely here for a bildungsroman about a queer woman, where the relationship with the wild love was tied up with the sheer, kind of... unspoken impossibility of same-gender relationships, the lack of a sensible model and the constant feeling of distance that creates with reality, and that had a steady, supportive, sympathetic male love interest set up as the "steady love"... ending with the queer woman falling in love and getting together with the most overtly butch other queer woman in the film??
Ohh my god. I didn't know I needed that until Tuulikki showed up in a sweater with her adorable sparrow hair and I realised that's where it was all heading. I'm so used to presentation being such a huge part of queer narratives, and with how anyone in those relationships presents being somehow a component of those relationships, and it has never really worked for me.
The casting of Krista Kosonen as Vivica was also fucking inspired b/c I know at least five people who had their egg cracked or a general "oh fuck I'm queer" because of her. My mom has actually met Vivica Bandler and according to her she was much more GNC IRL, but Vivica in the film being just this embodiment of "do I want to be her or be with her", both as a queer woman and as an artist really worked for the plot and the character arcs.
