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PEARLS
AND PIGS
7/10
Helmia
ja sikoja : Finland 2003 : Perttu LEPPA : 106-113
mins
 It's
no exaggeration that Pearls and Pigs's UK premiere at the
2004 Edinburgh Film Festival restored my faith in cinema. A faith that
had taken quite a severe knock earlier that afternoon following the dire
insect/incest farrago Red
Cockroaches. I was sufficiently browned off to seriously consider
swerving what the brochure unappetisingly billed as a Finnish satire of
TV talent shows. And the early stretches had me contemplating an early
exit: middling comic episodes introducing small-town (Joensuu) small-time
crook Erkki Hirvonen (Perka Valkeejarvi), a single father who operates
a bootlegging business with his four uncouth twentysomething sons. Namely
good-looking nice-guy Lade (Mikko Leppilampi), amiably stoned Timo (Unto
Helo), volatile tough-nut Ruho aka 'Bulk' (Timo Lavikainen) and nightclubbing
gay hedonist Pujo aka 'Boy' (Jimi Paakallo).
After what
seems like an age, the picture finally finds its feet when the hapless
Erkki is jailed and the lads must produce a large amount of Euros to pay
off 'Pig' and 'Sty' - local criminal bigwigs they've inadvertently offended.
As if this wasn't enough, the boys find themselves in a Three Men and
a Little Lady type scenario when their blonde-moppet half-sister Saara
(Amanda Pilke) is dumped on their doorstep by her hard-bitten prostitute
mother (Outi Maenpaa). But when Saara reveals unsuspected talents as an
angel-voiced singer, the brothers waste no time in entering her for the
lucrative televised 'Superkid' contest. Complications ensue.
Despite that
clumpingly slow start, Pearls and Pigs eventually establishes itself
an enormously good-natured, big-hearted crowdpleaser - to Edinburgh 04
what Torremolinos
73 was to Edinburgh 03. Though one suspects that many of the references
and gags aren't just Finnish but specifically east Finnish, the
picture as a whole is thoroughly accessible, unpretentious fun - mercifully
unsentimental and, in its final twist, breezily allergic to conventional
moralising.
Pin-up Lade
may be a touch one-dimensional, and 'Boy' is conspicuously sidelined almost
as much as his incarcerated dad, but Lavikainen's (Johnny-Ramone-ish)
'Bulk' and Helo's out-there Timo make for a most engaging double-act.
By the end you'll be thoroughly convinced by the quartet's raucous fraternal
bonds, despite their looking nothing like each other. Indeed, despite
what occasionally feels like an overextended running time, you may even
find you could quite happily spend another hour or two chez Hirvonen.
Fun with Finns, as Basil Fawlty (nearly) put it.
14th September,
2004
(seen 28th August : UGC Edinburgh : public show - Edinburgh
Film Festival)
click
HERE for our full coverage of the 2004 Edinburgh Film Festival
by Neil
Young
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