Man's Job

Juha is thirty-eight, with three small children and a wife who is depressed. He believes that providing for the household is a man's job. When he is dismissed he cannot tell his family, and goes on leaving the house every morning as if he were going to work. Through someone he knows he starts selling sex for money. What he earns is far above what he earned before; what he is hiding grows every day. Aleksi Salmenperä's film does not use the subject as scandal; its actual matter is the link between masculinity and money. Juha defines himself entirely by what he brings in, and once that goes he has nothing else to stand on. The narrative neither judges nor excuses; it just watches how the lie turns into a system. Tommi Korpela's performance is quiet and steady. It is among the harder of the films Finnish cinema made about class and work in the middle of the two-thousands.