Hymypoika (2003) User Reviews

A cautionary tale of spiritual emptiness

[jz-10 · 5/10 · 25 November 2005]

This movie is a tad better than the user ratings indicate. Perhaps some were hoping for porn, and came away disappointed--although there is plenty of nudity, there is nothing to titillate--this is a moving and cautionary tale of spiritual emptiness.

"Young Gods" is the ironically-titled film that examines the vapid world of mesmerizing images we live in, when there's no guidance for spiritual context. We experience this confusion through the eyes (and lenses) of four Finnish boys, all recent high-school graduates. Taavi has just inherited his deceased father's mansion and wealth, but has blocked out the memory of his death, and moves through life at a distance, viewing everything possible through his camcorder's viewfinder. Jere is emotionally dead. He has a girlfriend and finds comfort in sex, but is unable to open his heart. Sami, homely and overweight, has zero self-esteem. Markus is very immature, but otherwise fairly well-adjusted.

The four make an odd pact to film their sexual conquests, and the four find themselves living in an even more illusory meta-world, as their desire to film sex takes precedence over their actual desires, and recording an event becomes secondary to experiencing life. They all seem to lack a father who can teach them about love and loving, and are left to float down a river of sex and imagery without a clue to its purpose. (Jere's father is no help: he's a pornographer, coolly composing loveless sex scenes as though creating a grocery display.) Slowly, the consequences of their pact begin changing them as it brings out the yearning, emptiness, violence, or love that is really within their hearts.

Movie with a good idea with potential but average realization

[Myrzan · 6/10 · 9 January 2006]

The plot of the movie has been already described pretty well in comments by other people so I won't repeat it so extensively here. The other comments are however (or at least have been so far) quite positive so I thought I'd add my own opinion too since I didn't think this movie was that good.

Like I said this movie is based on a good idea. In short it's about these 4 guys who get this idea of a sort of a 'game' where they would video all of their.. well, intercourses and then watch them together afterwards for fun. As most people can probably guess, things end up going very badly wrong and people get very hurt (a girl gets raped and one of the guys eventually kills himself).

Sadly, the realization of the movie isn't as good as it could have been. It doesn't feel believable. I just couldn't buy it that these 4 guys would do the things that they are shown doing. The character development feels often unrealistic. It's sort of hard to explain. In the movie 'Traffic' the viewer is in my opinion shown pretty believably how people end up making bad decisions and end up losing control of their lives. This movie fails in that.

As a result, I found this movie to be entertaining (often even amusing) mostly because of its general "freakiness" and its shocking subject rather than its quality. This movie reminds me of 'Baise Moi' and 'Mauvaises fréquentations' both of which are these sort of depressing french dramas where peoples lives basically go down the toilet (although 'Hymypoika' has a happier and more hopeful ending). If you like this, check them out. Also the movie 'Piano Teacher' has the same sort of feel (and dysfunctional characters) in it as 'Hymypoika' has.

My vote is 6/10. If you haven't seen this you haven't missed anything special.

PS. If you want to see finnish movie at its best I would recommend Gourmet Club. It has a funny plot and the cast includes Michael Badalucco (he played 'Jimmy Berluti' in 'The Practice'). Also I can sincerely recommend a very well produced and very entertaining dark comedy short film called 'Rare Exports Inc.' which reveals some amazing facts about the origin of Santa Claus. Reviews of both can be found here on IMDb.

6/10

[omarsamra · 6/10 · 22 February 2007]

This film will catch you unawares. I felt that the film would be a risqué and rather typical coming of age film. It has all these variants but to a deeper degree. I actually finished the film and was extremely upset with all the male characters. They were willing to throw away their sufficient lives for the thrills of voyeurism. Jere especially. The other reviewer talked about how the camera was the source of all evil in this movie. After all it was how Tavvi found out the truth about his parents death and was the eventual downfall for two out of the four male characters.

This film is not recommended for the lighthearted, and you how you will feel after the movie is totally up in the air. I was rather disgusted with their little game, but just my opinion. As for the way the movie was shot; it was done well the angles, the characters were somewhat believable....a decent film overall.

OLD FASHIONED MORALITY TALE

[richardkassir · 4/10 · 19 August 2020]

Oh dear. Oh dear. Yet another Victorian morality tale dressed up as a story of modern sexual freedom. A sort of updated struwwuelpeter (without the humour) to shock the middle class viewers, the target audience (I suppose) for this sort of internalised non-drama. The audience can then nod their heads sagely when inevitable disaster overtakes the promiscuous youngsters. The sub-genre works like this: Take a bunch of wealthy kids in their late teens, they don't have to work so, for the want of anything better to do, they gather to experiment with sex which seems like a good game until it leads them into obsession and tragedy. In this case a boy obsessed with filming everything creates a club where participation requires each member to bring a video of their latest conquest for them all to see. Ho hum. Someone dies at the end. Who'd have thunked it?

Finnish This Movie

[juliankennedy23 · 7/10 · 16 November 2006]

Young Gods: 7 out of 10: For once I would like to see a teenage drama where careless foolish teenagers get away with being well careless and foolish. Nobody gets hurt, pregnant, married, commits suicide, tragically killed ext… they just act like complete idiots and go off to college. Kind of like real life for a lot of kids.

On second thought there are movies like this but they are all have Porky's in the title. Young Gods is unfortunately a teenage drama. Which means no foolish action will go unpunished.

Before the drama really kicks in we have a super realistic look at the lives of four teenage boys. The movie nails the attitudes and actions of young males of that age group and the pace while leisurely actually reflects the indifference to time people of that age actually have. (It also reflects the boredom that comes with no school and no job.) The movie also has a surprisingly naturalistic attitude about nudity and sex. Some may be shocked by the young actors' nudity but it felt non-sensationalist and rather realistic.

The plot about voyeurism and constant filming is overdone (see drama above) and the results of the boys' actions seem more draconian than real life. But this is after all a movie.

Despite being relatively slow placed and occasionally over-dramatic Young Gods is an enjoyable, realistic and fresh coming of age film.

Sex, truth and videodisks

[Crispin-3 · 7/10 · 1 December 2007]

Superficially just another Scandinavian twist on the teen coming-of-age sex movie, I think there is genuinely a deeper level of interpretation. This odd film reminded me inevitably a little of Sex, Lies and Videotape - but the subtext is a much more general social commentary on the issues of privacy and personal freedom. The larger cast expand the personal issues to the social context without losing intensity in individual performances.

As a North American, I feel slightly disconnected from the European society -- we do not (yet) have surveillance cameras on every street corner. Nevertheless many places from banks to 24-hour grocery stores already use video surveillance, most cell-phones now come with an integrated camera, the web-cam is a common household appliance, and sex has become a spectator sport perhaps more than at any time in previous history. It is easy to say that my freedom ends where your privacy and right to security begin -- but it is not always so easy to find that point in our complex, crowded, fearful 21st century society.

Be warned: The sex scenes are numerous, explicit, and grittily realistic -- a far cry from the blurred-lens romance of the soft porn of most North American or British adult movies, or the extreme absurdity of so-called hard porn. I found this verismo refreshing in an odd way, although many may find it disturbing, especially in a film about late teens or twenty-somethings.

My one regret is that one of the subtext messages seemed to be one common to many movies: Young people can have sex, but they will be punished for it. Whatever the truth of this philosophy, it is an older person's perspective, which to me jarred with the viewpoint of the film, told almost entirely from the teenagers POV.

Although no totally new ground is broken here, I think this film is worth at least a good first look and perhaps a second viewing.

'I Am A Camera'

[gradyharp · 9/10 · 2 October 2005]

Walk down any street in metropolitan areas and the omnipresence of the Big Brother camera is frightening: cell phones now capture all manner of images from friendly to horrific, cameras at stores' entries scan customers like a police state, police have license plate detecting cameras on their vehicles, strolling youngsters and tourists have the ubiquitous camcorders recording sights and other people's privacy - the list is endless. This strangely mesmerizing film 'HYMYPOIKA' (Young Gods) from Finland addresses these facts and builds a story around just how invasive and destructive the personal hand-held video camera has become. '1984'? Yes, in many ways it is.

Director Jukka-Pekka Siili has taken an idea from Jaajo Linnonmaa, passed it through screenwriter Jukka Vieno, and though Jarkko T. Laine is credited as the cinematographer, Siili records this story as though he were the one holding the intrusive camera. The technical aspects of the film - black and white into color into white noise screen into abrupt movement, odd angles, etc - are a strategically important aspect of the film's success.

Taavi (Jussi Nikkilä),the enigmatic 18-year-old lead, has just inherited his long-deceased wealthy parents home and estate. It is high school graduation and Taavi's birthday, and after his fiends greet him au natural and are arrested (the policewoman Helena Pääkkönen - Laura Malmivaara - is attractive and forgiving), Taavi invites his friends to the mansion for a wild party. Taavi lives with a recording camera to his eye, a machine that allows his to keep interpersonal distance from everyone. Among his friends are Jere (Reino Nordin) who considers himself a woman's man, Markus (Jarkko Niemi) who appears the well-adjusted one, and chubby, pierced Sami (Ville Kivelä) whose sexuality is ambiguous. The party gets wild, guests sleep around, and Taavi records it all! When Taavi's friends discover his deed, a pact is made: each of the four young men will videotape their own sexual encounter. This contest begins innocently enough for the boys, but when the girls photographed en flagrante discover the ploy, anger erupts and varying degrees of tragedy occur. As with many invasive games, this contest progresses to humiliation, rape, and worse, and finally leads to the truth about Taavi's secrets about his parents and his own personality disorder - all focused on the video camera as the source of evil.

The film is daring, entertaining, frightening, cruel and dissecting all at once. While many may dismiss this as just another example of foreign film exploitational technique, there is much more to the story than meets the first encounter. Siili has uncovered truths about our current preoccupation with privacy invasion and they are loudly criticized here. This unrated movie is not a film for the squeamish, but it is a significant statement that needed to be made. Grady Harp

Amazing Gay Movie From Finland!

[Raja79 · 8/10 · 13 February 2022]

Why is this movie so under-rated?

This was such a chill, yet such an entertaining watch!

And it had so many awesome, intense and hot gay scenes, without any toxic masculinity whatsoever.

This was an awesome movie.