QUICK’N DIRTY: LIVE FROM TALLINN
Some activities are intrinsically more cinematic than others. Boxing, for example, with its crunched yet still kinetic space and big lights, is naturally more cinematic than the much less physically dramatic chess. Group therapy is difficult to place on this spectrum of anti-cinematic activities on one hand and inherently cinematic ones on the other. It’s both somehow. The mechanical movement of one person in the group session to the next greatly reduces the potential of both the camera and the edit. It also creates the opportunity for fantastic, emotionally unhindered performances in an enclosed space , much like in theatre. Finnish director Paavo Westerberg’s Therapy comes as close as ever before to winsomely cinematising group therapy.
There are too many therapists in Leena (Pihla Viitala) and Pekka (Tommi Korpela)’s marriage. Ironically, the two relationship therapists struggle to make things work for themselves. After all, the shoemaker’s wife is always worst shod. The problem is they already spent a pretty penny restoring a historic manor in Estonia’s northernmost tip, where the Baltic country almost meets its Nordic neighbour, in order to open a relationship retreat centre and help others work through their issues. The guests are Finnish and most of them need something more than a week-long therapy retreat. One of them, Anna, played by Alma Pöysti (from Aki Kaurismäki’s Fallen Leaves, from 2023), even “brought” her dead husband Timo (Jakob Öhrman) on the couple’s retreat. We see him too and his ghostly presence raises questions that not even two therapists know how to answer.
The actors in Therapy bring out the best in each other. At least two of the relationships at the retreat require mending due to extramarital romantic pursuits. Opening up their marriage started off fun for Esa (Antti Luusuaniemi) and Jaana (Matleena Kuusniemi), but now only the latter enjoys their consensual non-monogamy. They have two of the best scenes in the film. In the first, Esa vents his emotions during a strange therapy technique where he must act out both sides of a fake conversation with Jaana’s other lover. Luusuaniemi’s outpouring mixes regret and anger with a rare passion. Most actors end up coming off too performative when they try to marry so many complicated emotions at once, but Luusuaniemi loses composure completely in the best of ways – and that makes the scene fully natural. “But she’s my wife!” he screams, with the emphasis on “my.” His pent-up synthesis of emotions is how anyone might react, and that’s a part of what makes it great.
Jarmo Kiuru is quickly establishing himself as one of the hottest young cinematographers of Northern Europe. In 2022, his work on Girl Picture elevated a rather simple script into a bit of an instant indie queer classic. In Therapy, he assigns a mostly nonchalant look to the film. In the actual group therapy sessions, the non-intrusive cinematography creates an open sandbox for the actors to play in. The secret to cinematising therapy, Westerberg and Kiuru seem to tell us, is made by the casting director. The biggest exception to the low-key approach is the monochromatic confrontation scenes where a pale and very sad blue overwhelms the characters, much like a very cold winter. Kiuru articulates everything we need to know about the interactions with the color grading alone.
Estonian-Finnish co-productions are nothing new either to PÖFF’s Baltic category or to Estonian filmmaking. The neighbouring film industries collaborate frequently. Rather than an Estonian preference, Therapy clearly shows a strong Finnish bias – in both the cast and crew as well as the film’s primary language – and that is somewhat unusual for the Baltic Competition. It’s also symbolically inclusive by eliminating nonsensical constraints on what counts as a Baltic film. Therapy was made in Estonia and with the support of the Estonian production company Stellar Film. Is that not, quite literally, a Baltic film?
Therapy just premiered in the Baltic Competition of the 29th Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival.
