Review: 'Girl Picture' Puts New Spins on Coming of Age

The press notes for Alli Haapasalo's coming-of-age dramedy "Girl Picture" explains that the original title in Finnish, "Tytöt tytöt tytöt" – literally, "Girls, Girls, Girls" –�"is a phrase that's used in Finland to shame girls," uttered while "wagging your finger and using the 'What have you done now' tone of voice."

Haapsalo, together with screenwriters Ilona Ahti and Daniela Hakulinen, pushes back on that with a film that's immensely smarter than most teen sex comedies, if that's indeed what this is – though this picture is smarter, deeper, and infinitely more nuanced than standard sex romps or routine rom-coms.

The ingredients are there: Mimmi (Aamu Milonoff) and Rönkkö (Eleonoora Kauhanen) are best friends with very different outlooks and approaches to life. Rönkkö is unimpressed by sex, but urgently missing love in her life. (There's a hint that she might be asexual.) She's also sweet and maybe a little too cautious. Mimmi, on the other hand, has a fearless, sometimes overly aggressive, way of tackling life; she's independent and confident, if given to moments of insufficient impulse control. She's the sort who will take what she wants – and when she decides that what she wants is figure skater Emma (Linnea Leino), who is struggling with a mental block and the pressure of crucial upcoming competition, she unabashedly goes for it.

Over the course of three Fridays and a Saturday – which is to say, three parties and an eventual resolution to the storylines that those parties push along – the three begin to find their way. Mimmi wrestles with feelings of abandonment as she's overlooked by her mother and her mother's new husband and child, Emma begins allowing herself to want more out of life than her rigorous training schedule, and Rönkkö experiments with different handsome young men, including the slightly androgynous Sipi (Amos Brotherus) and the charming heartthrob Jarmo (Mikko Kauppila), who might be the only male on the planet who gets Rönkkö's raunchy, off-the-wall sense of humor.

Haapasalo further explains in her notes to the film that, unlike other movies... or real life... this trio of young women "are not punished for desiring. They don't end up in danger. They don't get warned, belittled, shamed or patronized."

And yet there are emotionally compelling worlds explored here, with doubt, fear, pain, and self-sabotage lurking around every corner. But with persistence, and with unshakeable friendship, those are worlds that these three young women are set to conquer.

"Girl Picture" opens in theaters Aug. 12.