QUICK AND DIRTY: LIVE FROM TALLINN

Raising a teenager is hard. Little confrontations can be overshadowed by much bigger problems: the kid joining a violent drug gang, shooting sex tapes, ot going missing every night. Such is reality for Helena (Katariina Unt), a paramedic, and her daughter Stefi (Teele Piibemann).

Estonian director Liina Triškina-Vanhatalo does not ask viewers to empathise with her characters, at least not from the outset. There is moody Stefi, who hates it school, and is constantly fighting with everyone. Helena is worries, frantically cycling through their Estonian hometown for hours, looking for her daughter at nighttime. But that’s just one side of mum. A vert cold and distant Helena withdrew all emotional support from her daughter long before the problems surfaces. Had she honed he motherly skills harder, perhaps Stefi wouldn’t be such a a difficult place right low.

Caught in between these confrontations are Stefi’s father Kaarel (Ivo Uukkivi), somewhat of a peacekeeper at home, and her younger brother Sander (Joonas Mikk), who has a good relationship with his sister, but is starting to exhibit signs of neglect from his parents. After all, he is the good adolescent. Their efforts fail. Stefi continues to mingle with some dodgy characters, particularly aggressive redhead Mariann (Elina Masing). She ends up in hospital one evening, drugged and seemingly suicidal.

Helena is desperate to keep control of the situation. So she abducts her own daughter from the medical facilities and takes her to her old family’s countryside house. There, locked up in her nana’s old room, she regularly brings Stefi food, seeking to spend quality/healing time together. She must protect her child at all costs, she confides to local policemen Priit (Margo Teder). He empathises because his son too joined a local gang.

At this point, the film enters a rinse and repeat cycle of mother-daughter confrontations. Blackmail, revenge porn and family feuds threaten to. derail the fragile relationship, and Stefi’s sanity. In its final part, the narrative penetrates the psychology of the leads, successfully focusing on the internal rather than the external turmoil of its protagonists. The invisible wounds become visible. It becomes clear why Helena was not such a good mother, and is now desperately trying to make up for the mistakes of the past. She seeks to sledgehammer herself back into Stefi’s life. All the while, as a viewer, one has to wonder if it is not too late.

Unt’s expressive face, her constant worries and fears are at the core of this tale, bouncing off Piibemann’s high-energy performance. “I will hate you forever”, she screams at her mom. Lioness toys with the moral consequences of a mother going to extreme measures to in order protect her child, while also denying her free will. Be prepared for a gut-punching “resolution”.

Lioness just premiered in the Baltic Competition of the 28th Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival.