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‘Family Time’ Review: Finnish Family Portrait Balances Christmas Cheer and Domestic Discord
Tia Kouvo’s astute debut applies a minimalist aesthetic to observations of three generations revealing their faultlines during a holiday get-together.
Susanna (Ria Kataja) is proud of her new promotion at work as a large store’s chief window dresser; she and husband Risto (Jarkko Pajunen) have two grade-school-aged children, son Kassu (Toomas Talikka) and Hilla (Elli Paajanen), who’s a budding wee control freak. Hilla takes it upon herself to scold Grandpa over his alcoholism (“Imagine what you and Grandma could have done with that money”), while gentle giant Simo flees the covert tensions briefly to do vehicular spin-outs in a shopping mall parking lot. Not as self-conscious in her austere stylization as Finnish cinema’s leading figure, Aki Kaurismaki, this director echoes his technique and some of his droll humor — but she applies it to ends that mimic a kind of nonfiction surveillance.
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