Naisenkuvia aka Portraits of Women (1970) - Jörn Donner-Erotica Films

28/10/18

Naisenkuvia aka Portraits of Women (1970) - Jörn Donner

Peter Cowie wrote:
Donner has always been intrigued by the position of women in Scandinavian life, although from an Ethical Rather than a sociological standpoint. Like Bergman's, his female protagonists loom larger in the memory than his menfolk. Portraits of Women (Naisenkuvia, 1970) is Donner's equivalent to Bergman's Now About These Women, except that it is much funnier in a shameless, earthly fashion. Again Donner sardonically deflates the supercilious image that many Finns have of their own behaviour, as he follows the priapic process of a porno-movie maker from take to take and from bed to bed.

Pertti returns to Finland after a spell overseas, and finds life and work confusing each other with maddening regularity. He sleeps casually with the wife of his best friend, becomes involved with another girl while "helping" her to stage a nude love scene in his picture, and is more seriously captivated by Saara, a schoolteacher whose archness and indifference get under Pertti's skin. Donner's humour gives the sex scenes a new currency ("Not 69 again," he sighs, in the midst of shooting one of them), and mocks many modish concepts. For example, Pertti silences with a single ripe retort the budding actress who announces her determination to appear in a political film rather than a porno movie. There is a uniformity of tone in the acting in Portraits of Women that must be credited to Donner's own example in the role of Pertti. Everyone plays with tongue in cheek, from the disgruntled sparring of the opening dinner sequence to the impudent eroticism of the closing moments. This cynical approach prevents Portraits of Women from slipping into the vulgarity (and naivety) of most pornographic films and diverts one's attention away from the writhing bodies towards the assured but very human personality behind the camera.