Girl Picture review: ‘Skins’ Naomi and Emily vibes all the way’

Words: Jamie Tabberer; pictures: Supplied

Conversations around sexuality and gender can, however envelope-pushing and necessary, be a turn-off when too serious and sombre.

It’s a treat, then, when films like Girl Picture come along, serving ground-breaking, informative representation like a big, airy piece of cake.

Director Haapasalo’s new film, which kicked off the BFI Flare: London LGBTQIA+ Film Festival last night, follows three teen girls from Finland as they explore life and love across three consecutive Fridays. It’s fun, accessible filmmaking, as wild and free as Skins, but softer and sweeter.
 
Speaking of Skins, remember that first Naomi and Emily-centric episode? The woodland bike rides, the lakeside smooching? (Side note, and brace yourself: those actresses are now in their 30s.)

Well, these girls – Aamu Milonoff as gloriously rude Mimmi, Eleonoora Kauhanen as kind-natured Rönkkö and Linnea Leino as intensely charged Emma – are from the same planet.

And what a tastefully curated planet it is, too: achingly cool clothes, awesome hair, endless house parties in stylish, Scandi-tastic spaces. The Shazam-able modern music, that builds and builds to a wall of sound before Haapasalo abruptly cuts to another scene, is expertly-selected.

Even the shared job of besties Mimmi and Rönkkö’s – they make innuendos with fruit at a minimalist a juice bar – is cool. There, they gently rib each other of an afternoon, with intelligent humour and an easy, intimate chemistry you half expect to turn romantic.

It doesn’t. When Mimmi serves tightly wound figure skater Emma a smoothie, they fall instantly love.
 
It’s unclear who, if anyone, identifies as a lesbian, or if they’ve even come out as LGBTQ community members. They just fall for each other. The film’s approach to sexuality is pleasingly blasé throughout: Emma seems more concerned with hiding Mimmi from her tyrannical trainer than her mother.

Where the film really breaks new ground, however, is with Rönkkö: a beautiful character you sense Kauhanen cherished playing. Ironically for a film vibrating with queer energy, she’s a self-confessed “hetero” – albeit with an interior world infinitely more complex than your average cis-het.

After a series of disastrous meet-cutes with future male models, (good lord, are the people in this film gorgeous) it’s strongly implied she’s asexual and hetero-romantic, and finally ready to embrace it.

Her story is humorous, unpredictable and above all thought-provoking. Whether or not Rönkkö considers herself queer is a question I long to ask, but I guess I’ll never know, and my heart goes out to her regardless. (Suffice to say, this is one fictional character I’m unusually emotionally invested in.)
 
Elsewhere, Milonoff is fiercely charismatic as Mimmi. A small issue is Leino’s quieter presence, but that is perhaps because the script demands it; her meek character nevertheless comes alive during the film’s emotional finale. One major imbalance of Girl Picture, though, is the almost total lack of interaction between Rönkkö and Emma. As such, press imagery of the three leads draped over each other like an inseparable hipster girl band is deceptive.

Regardless, we’d give anything to be teenagers again and hang out with this lot. A joyous watch.
 
Rating: 4/5

Girl Picture is released in Finland on 14 April 2022.