TRENCH ROAD A film review by Steve Rhodes
Copyright 2005 Steve Rhodes
RATING (0 TO ****): ***
Sometimes a single mistake can change your life forever, as it does in TRENCH ROAD (JUOKSUHAUDANTIE) when a domestic dispute turns briefly violent. Matti Virtanen (Eero Aho), a warehouse worker and a good cook for his family, gets really angry in a verbal argument with his wife, Helena (Tiina Lymi). When she screams, demeaning his job and how little he accomplished, he momentarily loses it completely and slugs her, causing her nose to bleed and the side of her face to swell up. It's the only time he has ever hit her, but once is enough for her. Helena takes their young daughter, Sini (Ella Aho), away immediately and goes to live with a female friend. Helena, who won't talk to Matti, says she wants a divorce and that she'll get a restraining order if he ever comes near her again.
The touching drama and black comedy works marvelously well until it goes off the deep end a bit in the last act. Up until then, it manages to be a realistic black comedy, which is tricky.
Matti sees himself in a few dream sequences in TV shows, including one on cooking and on "The Weakest Link." In one particularly sad scene, he stares wistfully at a menagerie of stuffed animals left behind by Sini.
Although it may have no grounds in reality, Matti begins to figure out a way to buy an old house, thinking that with it he could reunite his family. He starts working an extra job, and he sells his apartment. (One scene that most Americans will find quaint has him worried about taking out a mortgage "at the maximum term." He envisions himself and his wife as old folks all of 20 years hence, having finally paid off the mortgage and too old by then to enjoy finally owning their home.)
In the blacker comedy part, Matti begins to blackmail a philandering real estate agent, thinking he can use the blackmail in order to leverage a better deal on a home. He also starts to harass the owners of a house he wants to purchase with the hope that he can encourage them to want to leave the house and sell it.
The less satisfying third act does at least end well. All of the characters are worth your time and sympathy. And the story has some nice subplots as well, especially the one about a real estate agent musing into a tape recorder, making notes on the most effective ways to market homes.
TRENCH ROAD runs 1:53. The film is in Finnish with English subtitles.
The film is being shown as part of San Jose's Cinequest Film Festival (www.Cinequest.org), which runs March 2-13, 2005.
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