"The Heart of the man"
Miehen sydän

Finland 2004 colour ?min

***˝

Drama, comedy

cast: Mari Rantasila (Raija), Pertti Sveholm (Harri), Juha Muje (Niksu), Oskari Katajisto, Elena Leeve (Jenna), Pirkko Hämäläinen, Gunvor Sandqvist
credits: dir. Veli-Matti Saikkonen, script Kjell Westö with Veli-Matti Saikkonen and Marjatta Lohikoski, music Heikki Sarmanto with Juha Aaltonen and Paquito López Vidal

It's late. A man enters to a tiny dinner place, orders a meal and starts to eat it. It's almost the closing time. Suddenly he gets angry: the meal is cold. The lady who owns the place doesn't want to do anything for the issue, and the man goes absolute mad. Later we'll learn more about this guy, his friends, job, the misery of middle-age and his women. The owner of the dinner place may become one of them.

The script of the film won in 1997 a prize in EBU contest. The text is good and the actors work well together, especially Sveholm and Rantasila as the main couple. Still, the dialogue sounds a bit too stiff for their mouths. However, this is a very good story about Finnish mentality.

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