Scarlet Week

After a weekend of dancing and camping on a recreation island near the city, a young factory worker decides to skip a day of work and stay on. Walking around the now empty island he meets a woman camping alone. A closeness begins between them; she is married and comes from a wealthier circle than his. The affair lasts a week through the light filled nights of summer, until her much older husband returns to the island the following weekend. The film neither condemns the affair nor exalts it; it brings forward the difference of class and the fact that the ending is known from the start. The white nights of the north set the duration of the account. Gunvor Sandkvist plays the lead in Matti Kassila’s seventy nine minute Finnish film, completed in 1954.