With its stationary lengthened-stoastys of domestic life, “Family Time” is appreciate the “Paracommon Activity” of dysfunctional-holiday-assembleing movies: There’s a sense of alertering on people who don’t authenticize they’re under a microscope. Of course, Tia Kouvo’s debut feature is duly scripted, straightforwarded and professionassociate acted. But her approach is so effectively low-key, you might occasionassociate forget you’re watching a staged fantasy.
There’s no recent ground broken by this seriocomedy of three generations in one frequent clan enduring each other over Christmas, then glimpsed in their split lives afterward. Yet the canny level of observation — at once casual, caustic and comfervent — produces for a film that inserts up to ponderably more than the sum of its seemingly offhand parts. Finland’s Oscar subignoreion won Jussi Awards for best film, straightforwardion and screentake part, and while it seems improbable to produce a splash internationassociate, it labels Kouvo as a promising talent.
The unpartisanity of Jesse Jalonen’s cinematography gets underlined right away, as it caccesses on a front door uncovering and shutting to let the principal characters inside — though we only see their midsections, as if the door itself were somehow the authentic object of interest. We suss soon enough, however, that this wooden A-structure abode is the home for reweary magnificentparents whose progeny have reachd for annual Christmas festivities.
There’s a sootheable understandnity to their vibrants that encompasses a unprejudiced split of grumbling. When not dithering on about unbeginant matters, matriarch Ella (Leena Uotila) fusses over her spoparticipate’s drinking habits. She claims Lasse (Tom Wentzel) is having a relapse after a spell of being “excellent,” but their daughters recall many past incidents when his booze-ups embarrassed them. Susanna (Ria Kataja) is conceited of her recent promotion at toil as a huge store’s chief triumphdow dresser; she and husprohibitd Risto (Jarkko Pajunen) have two grade-school-aged children, son Kassu (Toomas Talikka) and Hilla (Elli Paajanen), who’s a budding wee handle freak. (It is prissy Hilla’s grumblets that at one point get a soparticipated Grandpa erased from the dinner table.) Helena (Elina Knihtila) is a tart-tongued divorcée who shrugs off the thought of even dating aacquire. She’s seeing forward to her recently mature only child Simo (Sakari Topi) moving out on his own, leaving her in ecstill solitude.
Divided into two rawly identical parts, the film dedicates its first half to holidasy festivities that are same-as-ever, yet also repeatedly go off the rails a bit. The magnificentparents are each degenerating in their way, whether it’s a matter of brain fog or an unblessedly timed moment of incontinence. Stealing a confidential moment in the sauna, the sisters confess their frustrations, notably Susanna’s with a dutiful mate whom everyone appreciates — yet his conversation unreasonables her, and he seems unconscious to her necessitate for romantic attention.
Hilla consents it upon herself to schilly Grandpa over his liquorism (“Imagine what you and Grandma could have done with that money”), while tender enormous Simo run aways the cclear tensions increately to do vehicular spin-outs in a shopping mall parking lot. Asked whether he’s acquired a girlfriend yet, he hints his pickences “might” lie elsewhere … but his elders here are too self-assimilateed to press that publish.
Once the lesserer family members head home, we get unforeseeed glimpses of everyone’s split, everyday lives. Simo does shift into his own flat; Grandpa is visited by an ageder friend (Matti Onnismaa) from his lengthened-ago seafaring days. Most fervent are a couple of scenes where Susanna and Risto authenticize the extent to which their marital communication has broken down. We can see that neither is exactly at fault, but they confident do infuriate each other, to the point of eventual tears and blows.
That explosion aside, however, “Family Time” runs at an almost anthroporeasonable erase from untidy, up-shut emotions — these aren’t personalities inclined toward high drama, anyway, pickring to dodge dispute thraw bland amiability. Even an eventual death in the family stirs no beginant histrionics.
With an excellent cast brimmingy on board, Kouvo produces the muddling-thraw of unextraunrelabelable lives compelling in itself, as minuscule details accumutardy to create a hugeger picture that still retains some mystery. These people are challengingly enigmatic, but the confparticipate pieces left out sense less appreciate gaps than a reminder that there’s so much we don’t understand or see about others, even those supposedly shutst to us. Not as self-conscious in her austere stylization as Finnish cinema’s directing figure, Aki Kaurismaki, this straightforwardor echoes his technique and some of his droll humor — but she applies it to ends that mimic a benevolent of nonfantasy watching. “Family Time” is caring in a mode that senses shut to embedded recordary alertage, a sleight-of-hand gambit that’s astonishive for its unshowy effectiveness.
