Dir: Zaida Bergroth (12, 103 mins)
Tove is, one reads, the second most expensive Finnish film of all time, with production costs of a little under three million pounds. Not astronomical by some industry standards, but appropriate – or appropriately understated, depending how you look at it – for a biopic of one of Finland’s most famous and esteemed daughters, Moomins creator Tove Jansson. Released (in the UK) almost exactly 20 years after her death aged 86, it portrays her as both vivacious and reserved, ambitious but never artistically satisfied; a complex, if not wildly troubled, soul living in interesting times.
We meet Jansson as World War II is drawing to an end: she’s attempting to forge a career in abstract painting, and idly sketching strange tubby creates of her own devising. Her father, also a painter though of a more formal ilk, prods a miniature illustration of the character who will become world-famous as Moomintroll and scoffs, “that’s not art!” A view which Tove will internalise and maintain throughout the film, as the Moomins become her cash cow and her canvasses are cast aside (or, in one scene, painted over).
Meanwhile, her Scando-bohemian lifestyle – unnamed liquors sipped from metal mugs, attempts to pay rent with paintings – is the setting for Tove to discover her sexuality. “I believe life is a wonderful adventure,” she says while disrobing for a local socialist politician – the wife he’s cheating on may see things differently – before meeting Vivica Bandler, theatre director and heartbreaker. Their relationship casts Bandler as the more domineering of the two women, her high opinion of the Moomins interpreted as belittling by Tove.
It’s all very well to do, characters invariably having the perfect quip for the moment, but it’s not to be charmed by shots of wooden Finnish houses in the snow, Parisian ballrooms or jazz 78s revolving on gramophones. Alma Pöysti is similarly pleasing as Tove, a not-overly-manic pixie dream girl you might say, and for better or worse there isn’t a huge amount of Moomin lore in this movie, or the necessity to have a great interest in it.
In cinemas from Fri 9 July
words NOEL GARDNER