Venice Days review - THEY HAVE ESCAPED (He Ovat Panneet) by J-P Valkepää
The runaway romance movie has been brought to the screen time and time again. However, if you're looking for cute rebellion, look away, because with They Have Escaped by J-P Valkepaa, presented in the Venice Days section of the 2014 Venice Film Festival, you're in for a different kettle of fish.
This is the story of a boy and a girl with radically opposite personalities and phisicalities who meet at a detention centre and decide to escape its drag and restriction soon after. Setting off on the typical road to nowhere, loosely searching for a treasure - the usual mcguffin - they get to know each other and gradually bond more and more. So far, this sounds like nothing that hasn't been seen before. Even down to the initial contrast between the two and the laws of opposites attracting that sets off this film is very familiar. Loosely speaking, Joni (Teppo Manner) stutters while Raisa (Roosa Soderholm) bites.
Yet, filmmaker J-P Valkepaa plays a lot with this structure and variates on the theme. For instance, the most obvious distinction is that more than a modernised children's romantic fairytale, They Have Escaped resembles a nightmarish Grimm tale. More than that, whenever warmth begins to blatantly show it is rudely interrupted by loud and bothersome sounds of thumping, screaming or anything you would normally identify with horror films. In fact, the word nightmarish has a meaning, as this is a film that plays a lot with the sinister and mysterious charge of dreams, while the plotline too drastically switches from pleasant and frivolous to downright horrific through a series of plot developments that would be a shame to ruin.
The sharp U-turns in mood, atmosphere and plot are perfectly conveyed by a meticulous audiovisual work. While the cinematography and mise en scene burrow switch from nature's glory to silent german expressionist references, the audio too messes with our heads with sharp rises in volume purposely keeping us on the edge of our seats and make us jump with fright in even the most innocent and least provocative of scenes. The concern, however is that in the midst of this stylisation, the relationship between Raisa and Joni may seem a little off and second rate. Whilst they both need each other, storywise not much is there to tell us that they should be with each other to the point of putting their lives at risk. One thing is for sure - Roosa Soderholm is the type of young Finnish beauty that conceals unspeakable magnetism. The camera loves her, and her presence is so wild and intimidating that it automatically makes the stuttering Joni seem like a devoted servant.
In a final twist, by the end we - the audience - realise that we have been played all along. Yes, the boy and girl runaway movie is something that has been repeated ad nauseum, sometimes better than other times. But while Valkepaa initially seems to embrace this prejudice, by the end it all unravels to the point where in its epilogue the film is no longer a film, but an abstract representation of moods and feelings of fear, frustration and intensity that we might never have expected.