In the final days of the Second World War, condemned Finnish sniper Veiko (Ville Haapasalo) is chained to a rock by his German "comrades" and told to keep watch for Russian troops on the road below. Facing a miserable death by starvation, the resourceful young Finn decides to escape using a glob of saliva and his reading glasses. Only once he's free, he realises he's in the middle of nowhere.
"WINTRY LANDSCAPE"
Finding shelter with a Lapp woman, Anni (Anni-Christina Juuso), Veiko discovers another escapee from the chaos of the war, Russian soldier Ivan (Viktor Bychkov). It's paradise, Finnish style: a bitterly cold, wintry landscape surrounded by reindeer and snow-covered mountains; a warm hut with a burning log fire; and a woman who, under her many layers of clothing, is young, beautiful and not a little desperate for some intimate company.
There's just one problem: none of these three survivors can speak each other's language. Confusion naturally ensues as Ivan mistakes Veiko for a fascist, little realising that he's a Finn who's been made to fight by the occupying Nazis. Anni just wants a man, having spent four years without one, and isn't too fussy if it's one or both of them! If Veiko and Ivan could stop bickering and actually get along, this might well be heaven on Earth.
"ENJOYABLY QUIRKY"
A comic fable about the destructiveness of war and the need for peace, love, and understanding, this drama may be slight, but it's enjoyably quirky, going for broad comedy in its tri-lingual confusion and sex-starved heroine. The Biblical parallels are rather obvious - this Eve has two Adams, who end up playing Cain and Abel with one another - and the pacifist message is simplistic, yet the performers throw themselves into the material with wild abandon.
Quirky, funny and yet occasionally dense, it's a curate's - not a cuckoo's - egg of a movie.
The Cuckoo (Kukushka) (2003)
