Gloomy look at a troubled teenager
ABOY aged 14 wipes steam from a mirror as the sound of water dripping, then gushing, becomes amplified. The scene morphs into one of floating feathers, then the boy holding a large shell, then a train leaving a collapsing bridge to plummet into water.
Suddenly the boy is in the train, water rising at speed to cover his head and trap him inside, while jellyfish, seaweed and a marionette float around him.
Welcome to the opening moments of the black-and-white Concrete Night, a drama from director Pirjo Honkasalo, that was Finland’s entry for best foreign language film at the 2013 Oscars ceremony.
Scheduled for a single screening at 5.30pm on Friday at Umhlanga’s Cinema Nouveau, the film is based on a novel of the same name by Pirkko Saisio, first published in 1981.
It opens the second and final week of the cinema’s second annual European Film Festival, for which a dozen films were selected under the theme, “A Woman’s World”.
Dodgy
Remaining screenings are from Friday to Sunday at 5.30pm and 8pm, a different film being shown at each screening.
Concrete Night centres on teenager Simo (a too-clean-cut Johannes Brotherus), who lives with his mom and chainsmoking, rather dodgy older brother, Ilkka (Jari Virman), who has a day left before starting a jail term.
How the brothers interact with their down-on-her-luck single mom (Anneli Karppinen) in their grim flat, in a concrete jungle in a poor area of Helsinki, pulls the early focus of an unhurried, haunting drama.
It’s a story that sees Simo fall under his brother’s influence, take poor advice from him, and be moved to spur two tragic events.
An enigmatic neighbour who may or may not have homosexual interests in Simo; a former girlfriend of Ilkka who is forced into sexual humiliation; a photographer with a penchant for seminaked boys wearing a garland of flowers as a crown... all find place in a film that is often strangely captivating, with some strong monochrome images.
However, in the end, Concrete Night suffers from stylistic overindulgence in its efforts to be both a hymn to abused youth and to offer a glimpse into the making of a psychopath.