Left Field Cinema

Aku Louhimies might not be a name you’ve ever heard of before. A Finnish director, who since his first feature film Restless was released in 2000, has directed five feature films, and despite the general high standard he is recognised to work at, only one of these films is currently available on UK DVD, Frozen Land. It is interesting that even up coming directors and critically acclaimed films have trouble finding distributors; so many excellent works remain unavailable to the majority of viewers, as Sunshine and Shallow Grave director Danny Boyle remarked in a recent interview for BBC Radio 5, these films are cinema’s orphans, they need a home. You can import most of Louhimies other films from other countries, most obviously from Finland, but as a rule very few directors in world cinema are privileged enough to have their films distributed across the globe, if we look at the work of Joachim LaFosse for example, who directed last years excellent Private Property, despite this film being a critical success the rest of his work still remains unavailable on UK DVD. Indeed Private Property was probably only given wider release because Issabella Huppert took the leading role, but Frozen Land has no such star attached to it, it sinks or swims based on the total of the films merits, and if we were to extend this into a sporting metaphor then Frozen Land is an Olympic level swimmer.

In part based on the short story The Forged Coupon by Leo Tolstoy, this is not the first film to take inspiration from the Russian morality tale, Robert Bresson’s 1983 film L’Argent also had a basis in the story and built a film around it. The Forged Coupon begins with a boy faking the value of a coupon and making it worth more than it actually is, this then starts a chain of events which lead to death and despair, the con, the morally unacceptable behaviour breeds more morally unacceptable behaviour. Both L’Argent and Frozen Land take the foundation and outcome of The Forged Coupon and create new stories, modern stories around the concept. Thus the films themselves are radically different but have one unmistakable commonality, that of the forged money, in the case of Frozen Land it is a five-hundred Euro bill, but our inciting incident comes slightly before the use of this counterfeit money. We begin with a school teacher being made redundant from his job, as a result he begins drinking heavily and has to sell his sons stereo and TV in order to pay for some more booze, his disgruntled son Niko played by Jasper Paakkonen leaves his fathers flat and moves out, whilst at a New Years party with some friends Niko discovers a computer with a template for the forged Euro note, he prints a copy off and uses it to buy a stereo from a local second hand business, looking to rid himself of this counterfeit note, the shop owner uses it to buy a TV from a customer Isto played by the truly marvellous and memorable Mikko Kouki (more about him a little later) Isto is then arrested for using the money and decides to steal a car because of it, he then runs into Teuvo played by Sulevi Peltola (another of this films acting revelations), characters continue to effect each others lives beyond forged Euro note, to continue the plot summary would be to spoil some of the films content, but further up the chain the events effect Elina, a rich teenager played by Pamela Tola, Hannele a beat cop played by Matleena Kussniemi and her school teacher husband Antti played by Petteri Summanen.

After listing the members of a cast of actors you’ve probably never heard of, it is important to recognise what an incredible ensemble cast this film has put together, a few of the performers here have worked with Louhimies before and since so it is clear that he is a director who knows his actors and knows how to handle actors and extract the best possible performances from them, whether the character is a misogynistic arrogant prat like Isto with a peculiar obsession with all things American, or an alcoholic vacuum cleaner salesman struggling to stay on the wagon like Teuvo, or a young expecting mother who is overwhelmed by the situation she finds herself in like Elina, or a female cop who doesn’t fulfil any female cop stereotypes like Hannele. Often performers from countries around the world are neglected when it comes to greatest actors lists, in the English speaking world we prefer to rave about Al Pacino or Meryl Streep, but usually forget the more than accomplished performers around the globe, if Frozen Land was to be remade in the United States, a casting director would have trouble trying to fill a cast this size with equivalent acting talents and still manage to stay within the films budget. Of course actors in Finland are not paid nearly a fraction of their American counterparts and so budget is not a problem in this case. Frozen Land has a perfect cast, but it had to be this way, as no one character holds the film together, the performances had to be of uniformly high quality or the whole film falls apart, and although the strongest performances are that of Peltola and Kouki, it would be difficult to decide the weakest performance because there really isn’t one to choose.

Although Frozen Land is relentlessly bleak, it does make up for its merciless plunge into despair with some laugh out loud breaks of incidental comedy. Most of said comedy surrounds Isto, for example in one scene he is sat in front of a TV watching porn, we can hear the TV and we see his body vibrating as if masturbating, the director cuts to a wide to reveal that Isto is actually polishing his shoes. Another scene with Isto sees him steal a four wheel drive car from a dealership, he yells out of his window in excitement before skidding to an abrupt halt as the vehicle gets caught behind a snow mound and Isto is forced to get out of the car and push it over the mound before he can continue his high spirited get away. Later Isto and Teuvo get together in a bar, after getting furiously drunk they take a woman back to Isto's bedroom a little while later Isto and the woman are having sex and yet more porn is playing on the TV, Teuvo looks from the TV to the couple having sex next to him and his expression is simultaneously hilarious and deeply saddening.

Isto and Teuvo are easily Frozen Land’s most interesting creations, and as stated previously are both played by the films most accomplished performers, the blending of comedy and tragedy in both their storylines is worth watching the film for on its own. Teuvo’s pitted face and mournful dead eyes that elicit a peculiar combination of emotions from within the viewer – we simultaneously fear and pity him. Sulevi Peltola portrait of Teuvo is astounding. You may recognise Peltola from the Aki Kaurismaki film A Man Without a Past, or as the lonely barber from the Estonian film Veiko Ounpuu’s Autumn Ball.

The Film's cinematography is excellent, as the films title suggests, this is Finland in winter, a snow and ice covered land the cold light of winter bouncing off every surface, the director of photography Rauno Ronkainen has managed to produce excellent images from seemingly natural exterior light and ordinary interior lights, the colour grade deepens the films shades of green, blue and white. The film looks great, mixing hand held close-ups with elegant wide angle tracking shots, never descending into shaky camera tactics, Ronkainen keeps his frame tight and compensates for the actors movements but never over compensates for the sake of aesthetics. His lens is dynamic and always approaching its subjects in an interesting and new way, in many scenes the camera focus' on the back of characters head for example as a sort of third person point of view shot, placing the character within their own perspective. In the technical arena the films sound design also deserves praise, on a number of key occasions the films natural sounds and dialogue is drowned down and replaced with only the ambient score (a score which is sparingly used throughout the entire runtime), other moments are completely silent except the sound of a pill entering a mouth or hand picking up a gun. In both sound and visuals the films is just the right balance between unvarnished and slick, a little bit of both and we have a next to perfect film from a technical stand point.

There is a common view that world cinema, or intellectually challenging films have to rely solely on dialogue, direction and performances, that viewers craving action scenes or a faster pace will be left disappointed, of course this is not the truth of the matter in every case and Frozen Land is a good example of an intelligently drawn film that's not afraid of using action to its advantage, Frozen Land has car chases, a car crash, foot chases, characters dodge oncoming trains, younger cast members go to raves and private parties, cocaine is snorted (in one of the most realistic depictions of the action I've ever seen), sex and rape of both genders are also present, all the virtues and vices that make up humanity are displayed in this film, murder, theft, counterfeiting, and the range of human emotion is also explored, love, hate, guilt, despair, depression, exhilaration, fear, grief, happiness, loss, and life are all experienced within Frozen Lands wide ranging canvas. It is a film about life, a film about connections, the events which bring us together and tear us apart. From the films roots in The Forged Coupon there is a very clear anti-capitalist/anti-greed agenda at play within Frozen Land, even when for the forged Euro is taken out of the equation the misery continues. Money, the need for money, the love of money is the root of all evil, and it doesn’t matter what you do in this world, if you peruse financial gain or not, someone else who is entirely unconnected to you will eventually effect your life in one way or another through their own pursuit of prosperity. Every person involved projects his or her misery onto the next person. From opening to final scene, everyone and everything is connected and everything and everyone fails, but as the young Niko points out “we have to believe that life turns out for the best, otherwise what’s the point of living?”

M. Dawson