Tauno Lehtihalmes
On her way home from an evening shift at a men's clothing store, Saara Nevanen is raped by a man whom she recognizes as her regular but eccentric customer, Antti Kaironen. The doctor and policemen question Saara in an insensitive manner,and she breaks down with guilt. When the court releases the perpetrator inlack of evidence, Saara's aggressive brother Jari talks her mild-mannered husband Sakari into a self-made revenge plot. Armed with two rifles, Jari and Sakari take matters into their own hands.
Irma Auer (Satu Silvo) is a former call-girl, trying to distance herself from the past. In a séance she is told to be 'marked for death', and is afterward threatened by her former pimp and abandoned by her groom, as he learns about her past. Irma attempts to commit suicide, and resurrects at the city morgue after being pronounced dead. After the incident, she wanders out direction-less, being pursued by the doctor who treated her and also a strange, tall man.
Based on a novel by the late Finnish writer Timo Mukka, this simple story focuses on what happens when Milka (Irma Huntus), a girl barely out of childhood, gets pregnant by Ojanen (Matti Turunen) a rustic fieldhand. Her own mother had been hoping to marry Ojanen, and her daughter's pregnancy turns their lives around. Set in the Lapp country of northern Finland, the scenery is breathtaking, made even more so by the isolation of the region. A sense of natural solitude is underscored by a slow-moving dialogue interspersed with long silences, and the connection between nature and the dialogue is underscored as the young Milka recites poetry while out in the countryside. The fate of Milka and her mother, however, is connected to the decision that Ojanen makes at the end.
