Four Little Adults

Finnish filmmaker Selma Vilhunen’s latest offering follows the seemingly ideal marriage of Alma Pöysti’s Juulia (recently seen in the Booking Scheme favourite Fallen Leaves), an MP working on parental leave reform, and Eero Milonoff’s Matias (Border), a respected vicar. When Matias’s year-long affair with Enni is brought to light, Juulia is crushed. For the sake of her marriage, she makes the decision to open their relationship up and delve headfirst into polyamory. And so starts a frank and mature probe of sex, love, and modern relationships. Can the couple navigate these newly discovered choppy waters? Will their relationship sink or swim as they explore new partners and themselves?

Through both Juulia and Matias’s relationship and their respective jobs, Vilhunen finds the tension between the old and the new, bringing together clashing ideas of tradition and modernity. Matias’s elderly parents scoff at their newfound romantic freedom, while casually remarking upon their own past infidelities. Vilhunen asks audiences, “is it really so different?”.

There is more than a hint of legendary Scandi filmmaker Ingmar Bergman in Four Little Adults. Scenes of tender family Christmases recall Fanny and Alexander and similarly to Bergman’s best work, it exists in the messy and difficult aspects of human nature. Its screenplay refrains from judgement and, much like relationships, is rarely black and white. Selma Vilhunen has crafted a thoroughly modern Scenes from a Marriage for the 21st century.

We can’t wait to share this film with our audience at the Community Cinema Conference on 22nd June as part of the online programme. Tickets are available here.