Pieniä suuria valheita (Matti Kinnunen, 2018)

A separated former vicar arrives in a remote Finnish one-horse town with his young son and a ton of undisclosed baggage. They do not find it easy to settle in the closed community: the father is haunted by rumours about his past misdeeds and the son is systematically bullied at school. Thus it continues, until the message comes through that the only way out is to be honest at any cost.

This is a dyed-in-the-wool tenet of Finnish identity, much as making films that in no way advance the cause of the tourist industry is characteristic of their cinematic production. So, cheery it is not, but Time Out (better translated literally as 'Little Big Lies') does have a rewarding payoff, simply by remaining rooted in the reality of how people work.

6/10  

Hytti nro 6 (Juho Kuosmanen, 2021)

A Finnish archaeology student boards a train in Russia to Murmansk, where she intends to study ancient carvings in the local rocks. She is forced to share a sleeping compartment all the way there with a boorish Russian man and at first considers leaving the train, but then puts up with the duress when he shows signs of calming down.

Having set up the scenario from hell, that is the situation of being a solo western female traveller in barely post-Soviet Russia, surrounded by stone-faced officials and raging alcoholics in the middle of winter, this can go only one of two ways: to serve as a cautionary tale for anyone ever contemplating doing the same, or the less likely route, which is to show how love will find a way, no matter what it has to overcome.

One might guess after a while which option wins out. It can be seen as a Before Sunrise, but with all the picturesque scenery and sugar-coating taken out, and in some way this makes the denouement more rewarding.

It was made just before the war in Ukraine started in earnest, and this is fortuitous, both for logistical reasons and because, given the current emergency, it serves as yet another reminder of  both the individual humanity and national nihilism on the other side of the border. There isn't a causal link between these and the fact that Compartment No.6 shared the Grand Prix at Cannes with Farhadi's A Hero, and nor should we try to see one. It simply stands on its own merits.

7/10

Znachor (Michał Gazda, 2023)

Blandly translated for the English-language market as 'Forgotten Love', Znachor ('The Quack') is based on a hugely popular Polish prewar novel about a gifted and moral surgeon who is mugged after his wife has left him, presumed dead and wanders the country for 15 years stricken with amnesia, trying to remember even just his name. The one thing that he has not forgotten is his medical talent, and so he provides illicit care to the poor inhabitants of a rural village. Meanwhile, through a fantastical contrivance, his now adult daughter turns up in the same village to work at the inn. She then falls in love with the son of the domineering local countess and the course is set for a classic resolution, which can only be a happy ending.

Even when the novel was published in 1937, it would have been very old-fashioned in its themes and formulaic structure. It revolves entirely around social class and injustice, forbidden love and a fallen hero's quest, and would fit right into the milieu of the 19th century potboiler. Too many suspensions of disbelief are required. But besides that, it is beautifully shot, warmly humanistic and Leszek Lichota is a commanding presence as the doctor.

6/10

Silver Linings Playbook (David O. Russell, 2012)

Released from a mental institution into the care of his parents, a bipolar man is still dead set on winning back his wife, whose adultery had driven him over the edge. Along the way, which is full of bumps, he meets a spiky young woman with mental issues of her own and the manner in which they clash and make up repeatedly sends showers of sparks across the screen, as well as a rising certainty that they will end up together. Bradley Cooper and Jennifer Lawrence, despite their obvious age gap, make a magnetic couple, and Robert De Niro in support as Cooper's deeply superstitious and OCD-wracked dad completes a full house of people needing some calm in their lives. It's vibrant and sharp enough that not aspiring to profundity really doesn't matter too much.

6/10

Sachertorte (Tine Rogoll, 2022)

Boy meets girl, loses her phone number and sets out to find her. This involves going to Vienna to eat the famed chocolate cake of the title every day at the posh cafe where it originated, in the hope she'll turn up there.

So that's it in a nutshell. The message is basically a reminder to not let a chance of happiness through love pass you by, spelt out repeatedly by a permanent fixture amongst the patrons of the cafe in case we missed it. It could easily have come from the pen of Richard Curtis, and is a confection as rich as the cake in question. But it's also as sweet, and charmingly funny in places too.

6/10

The Gentlemen (Guy Ritchie, 2019)

Eloquent actors playing against type as gangsters who only talk in menacing innuendoes and faux-Cockney rhyming slang? Check. Comically thick henchmen? Check. Extreme violence played for laughs? Check. Almost every line peppered with f-words and c-words? Check. A cartoon criminal underworld with abundant back-stabbing plus numerous red herrings? Check. Yes, it's a Guy Ritchie film.

But not a bad one overall. Matthew McConaughey is the overlord of a marijuana-producing empire seeking to retire peacefully, and naturally that can't be permitted. Private investigator Hugh Grant approaches his second-in-command to sell the secrets that he has collected about their illicit organisation, wanting millions for them, and then proceeds to relate what he has found out, which serves as the unreliable narrative outline of the plot.

As long as you're prepared to tolerate Ritchie's limited ambitions and infantile fixations, which I'm sure he'd be quite happy to own up to, it's one of his better products, on a par with the two Sherlock Holmes films starring Robert Downey Jr., and passes the time divertingly enough.

6/10

Eaten by Lions (Jason Wingard, 2019)

Following the death of their grandmother, who had looked after them since childhood, a pair of half-brothers set out for Blackpool to seek out the actual father of one of the boys. Predictably, this proves to be far from straightforward. The other boy has cerebral palsy and is also a habitual shoplifter, and so they're in trouble well before they get to the house of the supposed father they seek. When they do meet him, he turns out to be unaware of his paternal status and a chronically irresponsible doofus, having to be pressganged by his large, conservative Asian family into dealing with the responsibility of parenthood.

So there are serious themes present, but at the same time there's a lightness of touch and genuinely funny moments throughout, which complement the plot rather than just serving as a distraction.

7/10