Finnish psychological drama Bad Family received with mixed feelings at Berlin Film Festival

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The Finnish film Bad Family directed by Aleksi Salmenperä and produced by Aki Kaurismäki has received with mixed reviews from the press at the Berlin International Film Festival 2010.
      According to Variety’s Alissa Simon, Bad Family (Paha Perhe) “loses its way at the midpoint, becoming a tonal roller-coaster that skitters to a stop”.
      Simon adds that the beginning’s serious thesping by the three principal characters suggests psychological depth, “but the script eventually leaves them high and dry.”
      “Lenser Tuomo Hutri gives the proceedings a hyperrealist look, while a lightly used keyboard-and-percussion score adds mocking commentary”, Simon continues.
     
Meanwhile, Jonathan Romney writes in Screen International a review of the film that is a great deal more positive. According to Romney, “Bad Family operates both as a Dostoevskian psychodrama, and as a comment on the famous emotional restraint which – if we’re to believe Kaurismäki’s own films - is a keynote of Finnish society.”
      Romney is particularly impressed with the leading actor Ville Virtanen’s performance saying that “he’s possessed of possibly the gloomiest demeanour seen on screen since Max von Sydow’s heyday, suggesting a man whose sorrows are etched indelibly on his features.”
      In Romney’s opinion Virtanen’s Mikael is “tantalizingly hard to read, making his rare demonstrative moments all the more disturbing”.


Links:
  Variety: Bad Family (review by Alissa Simon)
  Berlin International Film Festival – Paha Perhe (Bad Family)
  Screen Daily: Bad Family (review by Jonathan Romney)

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