[TURN ME ON DAMMIT! screens
Friday August 24th at 9:15 pm And
Saturday August 25th at 7:20 pm at the Cleveland Cinematheque.]
Review by Pamela Zoslov
Alma,
the pretty blond 15-year-old heroine of the Norwegian comedy TURN ME
ON, DAMMIT! (Få meg på, for faen)
is obsessed with sex. She masturbates furiously while fantasizing
about her schoolmate, Artur. She is also a regular customer of a
phone-sex fantasy line.
Alma's erotic obsession is likely the
result of living in a dull rural town called Skaddeheimen. So hated
is this (fictional) town that Alma (Helen Bergsholm) and her
girlfriends want more than anything to escape, whether to Oslo or
America. Whenever they travel by bus back to town, the girls give the
town's welcome sign a middle-finger salute.
The film, directed and co-written by
Janicke Systad Jacobsen from a novel by Olaug Nilssen, won the
screenplay prize at the 2011 Tribeca Film Festival. Jacobsen made her
feature debut with this film, using mostly untrained actors to good
effect. They project a deadpan authenticity that suits the sardonic
script and drab landscape captured by Marianne Bakke's grimly
evocative cinematography.
What sets this film apart from the
usual coming-of-age tales is its focus on adolescent female
sexuality. Alma is not just mooning over an unrequited crush; she's
ferociously sexual at an age, and in a place, where there is no acceptable
expression for her urges. What's a girl to do? Her mother (Henriette
Steenstrup), overhearing her daughter's masturbatory moans, is beside
herself with embarrassment, and even more consternated when the phone
bill arrives.
The film toggles between reality and
Alma's fantasies about Artur (Matais Myren). Her crush takes a
bizarre turn when she attends a community dance and Artur makes an
obscene move on her. She tells the rest of her classmates about
Artur's dirty deed, and is immediately ostracized. Everywhere she
goes, Alma is shunned and taunted with an obscene nickname that
sticks. Only one of her friends, Saralou (Malin Bjørhoude), a girl who
writes but never mails letters to American death-row inmates, agrees
to speak to her, but only away from school grounds. Alma's troubles
mount when her mother forces her to get a supermarket job to pay for
the phone sex charges. In her boredom, a rack full of racy magazines
proves too tempting.
The film has the taciturn absurdity
typical of Norwegian cinema. Alma's adolescent agonies – romantic
and social rejection, sexual frustration – are recognizable in any
language, but it is particularly amusing when the neighborhood
children chant Alma's vulgar nickname (in Norwegian, it sounds like
“Pic-Alma, Pic-Alma!”) while bouncing on a trampoline. The film
is filled with many such touches of sardonic whimsy.
The narrative isn't quite enough to sustain
the film's length, and its bold portrayal of young sexuality is
not for everyone. But the movie is distinguished by its unusual tone,
texture and girl-centric point of view. 3 out of 4 stars.
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