Written and Directed: Kirsi Liimatainen
Like any art form, cinema evolves and changes with the times. It is interesting to compare and contrast films of similar messages made in different decades. I often wonder if films made in the eighties or nineties could be even remotely successful today. For example, Go Fish, which I sincerely loved, could not be made today and attract the same audience. It was a product of its time.
Sonja feels like it was made at least a decade too late. Billed as a "coming of age" drama (actually a "sapphic awakening", about a decade earlier than people began to sincerely embrace that term), the plotline can be all-too-neatly summarised in one sentence: Sonja is a girl who one summer realises she's in love with her best friend. If you think you've seen that film before, you'd be right, and not just in queer films.
Any modern audience would be entitled to expect a twist. We could be forgiven for asking, "and then she does what?" In this day and age the hook can't just be "she thinks she might be gay." Queer cinema has come further than that. The something else can come from the plot or from the characters themselves, but it needs to be there. The ending can be depressing, personally I don’t mind sad stories, but the character needs to have progressed somehow.
Liimatainen seems to have not asked herself some fundamental questions. She has not asked, what makes Sonja, of all teenagers, so special that audiences will want to share her experience? What makes her family situation unique? What makes Julia, this girl she loves, so worthy (or unworthy) of her love? All we can say about Sonja is that she's sad, and sullen. Sure, that's what teenagers sometimes are, but why do I need to watch a film about it where the character seems to learn nothing from her experience?
You see, even if Sonja had been made in 1996 instead of 2006, I'm still not at all convinced it would have been a very good film. I just think it would not have suffered quite so badly by comparison to all the better coming of age dramas we saw in the 90’s and 2000’s (see All Over Me, or Fucking Åmål). Sonja is boring. Her parents are one-dimensional jerks. The girl she loves is exasperating and a rotten tease. The man she eventually sleeps with for no conceivable reason is ugly, old and uncharismatic. This film is so thin, it's starving.
Unfortunately it isn't just the script that suffers from malnourishment. It is visually bland too, and even when the story moves from the city, to a sports camp, to the beach and back again, there are not enough visual cues. The colours are washed out and uninspiring, for no particular reason other than Sonja is sad, so must the film's world be sad. Some vague attempts at symbolism (Sonja's penchant for running away to water in an effort to wash herself clean for example) are buried amongst random scenes that serve no purpose.
You might find some elements of truth in Sonja's story. After all, some aspects of teenage angst never really change. We all struggle with first love, and losing our virginity, and communicating with often distant and out of touch parents. These are things anyone can relate to, and they aren't unique to the gay experience. Trouble is, I've seen this film before—in gay and straight cinema—done in a thousand more interesting ways.