QUICK’N DIRTY: LIVE FROM TALLINN
Filmed on location in nouveau riche’s paradise Miami, his Estonian film gives a new definition to so-called “new money” when two normal people wake up with inordinate wealth. Taavi (Märt Pius) is a modest IT specialist for a bank and his wife, Liisa (Steffi Pähn), is an even more modest school teacher. How they got their money is a story told in 2023’s crypto-comedy Free Money. The satirical sequel picks up the premise and asks what would two absolutely ordinary people do with that money? Both films are directed by Rain Rannu, an incredibly wealthy businessman turned filmmaker and founder of the rising Estonian production company Tallifornia.
Their new wealth changes them. Or, to be more accurate, it turns Taavi into a less pleasant version of himself. He starts e-flirting with women on Instagram, perhaps empowered by his new monetary status, despite not being particularly dissatisfied with Liisa. In the beginning, they make decisions together: their vacation plans, how much money to give friends, how to invest (or not) their money, etc. By the end, Taavi assumes the role of a patriarch and starts making their decisions unilaterally. Liisa still wants to live their same life—she doesn’t even want to give up teaching, but Taavi makes that harder and harder.
Pius and Pähn have even stronger chemistry this time around, and the way they feed off each other’s energy saves the movie from sheer banality. The beach scene – with Liisa pouting topless and giving her partner the quiet treatment, who ignorantly struggles to read the situation or discern his wrongdoings – typifies the way their almost-theatrical emotives build on each other. The most recognisable Estonian actor alive, Ivo Uukkivi, also gets a pleasant small role that feels more like a favor than an endeavour of passion. He has a much larger role in Indrek Spungin’s documentary Happiness is Living in our Land, also screening at PÖFF.
The real showstopper is Elina Masing, who plays a fraudster named Alina trying to seduce Taavi in a swindling scheme. Masing owns her part with a seductive winsomeness. She is cool enough that it’s actually believable she might swindle some naive old man out of his savings over a phone call. It’s another supportive role for an actor whose talents demand a bigger spotlight.
Sometimes it’s easy to see when filmmakers are out of touch with the real world and, unfortunately, that matters a lot more when the plot is a collision of the world of the one percent and the 99% as it is in New Money. They already have trips planned with their friends and were no strangers to the socialite life before their bank accounts exploded. Some of the disconnect might be by design. The way they (fail to) navigate the world of the ultra-wealthy is supposed to be funny. One genuinely funny moment is when they, without much thought, maintain the same €50 gift-giving standard for a celebratory gathering with friends that they held themselves to the previous year.
The lion’s share of their struggles are unrelated, and this kills their own jokes. Fish-out-of-water humour works best when the world is familiar and a character from an unfamiliar world must step into it. Think Elf. Here, the dynamic is switched for most viewers and that’s a much more difficult rope to walk, especially for someone unabashedly coming from the world being satirized as does Rannu.
The characters in New Money make decisions so stupid with their money that it’s difficult to believe they were ever regular people. Most regular people have thought about money most of their lives. It’s the rich, and especially those coming from “old money,” who have enjoyed the luxury of not checking their bank accounts before making mundane purchases. And they just haven’t been rich enough for their habits to have changed so dramatically and so rapidly. The most frustrating decision along these lines is when Taavi’s unaltered use of a generic out-of-the-box password costs him millions. Not only is this a mistake that most reasonably intelligent and educated middle-class people would never make, but also he is an IT specialist for a bank. If this is part of a joke, it’s one with an unanswered punchline.
New Money just premiered in the Baltic Competition of the 29th Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival.
