Tove

Helsinki, 1945. The war is over and there is a new air in the city. Tove Jansson wants to be a painter; her father is a well known sculptor and does not take his daughter's drawing seriously. Tove rents a studio, gives parties, dances. Meanwhile she is drawing strange creatures for children; they will become the Moomins. She is involved with a married politician. Then she meets the theatre director Vivica Bandler and the most intense relationship of her life begins. Vivica leaves. Tove goes on drawing. Zaida Bergroth directs. Alma Poysti plays Tove and Krista Kosonen plays Vivica. Shanti Roney and Joanna Haartti are in the cast. It is a Finnish production. The film concentrates on the forties and fifties of Jansson's life and does not tell a whole biography. The matter it treats is being taken seriously; Tove counts painting as high art and the drawings as a living, and the world says the opposite. The film does not bring the Moomin characters forward; they stand at the edge of the story. The narrative does not hide Tove's bisexuality and recalls the legal pressure of the period. Alma Poysti plays the part with her body; the dancing is part of the narrative. The narrative does not resolve the relationship with the father. The photography builds postwar Helsinki in pale colours. The ending touches on the success of the Moomin books without stopping there. Its limit is reach; the narrative stays in a narrow period and looks little at the artist's work. Who it is for: viewers who like artists' biographies and Nordic cinema. Who it is not for: it is narrow, slow, and the ending rueful.