A fourteen-year-old boy in a stifling Helsinki slum takes some unwise life lessons from his soon-to-be-incarcerated older brother, in Finnish master Pirjo Honkasalo's gorgeously stylized and emotionally devastating work about what we pass on to younger generations, and the ways we do it.<br /><br />Finnish master Pirjo Honkasalo's feverish, stylized Concrete Night, a glimpse at the imaginative life of a fourteen-year-old boy, is an aesthetic tour de force — an emotionally devastating work about what we pass on to younger generations, and the ways we do it.<br /><br />The film is set during summer in a stifling Helsinki slum so eerily run down that a sticky sense of revulsion emanates from each location, from the industrial wastelands where young Simo (Johannes Brotherus) hangs out (his swimming hole is a bay beside a huge toxic-looking factory on the outskirts of town) to its various hothouse apartments. Peter Flinckenberg's creepily precise black-and-white cinematography and a muted soundscape create a claustrophobic sense of dread — while stripping the atmosphere of any temporal context. The unmoored setting perfectly reflects Simo's anxiety and confusion about the world around him.<br /><br />The pivotal issue is the imminent departure of Simo's older brother, Ikko (Jari Virman), the closest thing he has to a father, who's being sent to jail for six months on a minor drug charge. With incarceration looming, Ikko takes the opportunity to leave behind a few noxious pearls of wisdom on the sexes ("You can always hit a woman. They enjoy it, but only hit a man if you have to.") and humanity in general. We, Ikko explains, are the only species foolish enough to live in the future. Simo soaks it all up — and indeed, the film's most painful and touching moments come when he tries to adopt his brother's tough-guy poses.<br /><br />A bizarrely seamless fusion of Coppola's Rumble Fish, De Sica's The Children Are Watching Us, and early David Lynch, Concrete Night is a cautionary tale about the attitudes and stances we cavalierly adopt without realizing the impact they have on those in our charge. Here, the children aren't just watching us, they're listening — and repeating. <br /><br />http://tiff.net/filmsandschedules/festival/2013/concretenight2
