Eleonoora Kauhanen, Linnea Leino and Aamu Milonoff in Girls Girls Girls (2022)
“You’re giving yourself a gift when you strengthen the connection between your body and mind,” coos a mindfulness track that Emma (Linnea Leino), an aspiring professional ice-skater, listens to after screwing up her triple Lutz during practice. She is earnestly trying to be ‘mindful’. But upon hearing “you’re giving your body a nice, gentle massage,” Emma rips out her headphones. This is the sort of gooey, disingenuous ‘self-care’ nonsense that troubled women and girls are given when they’re most in need of hard-headed advice; such doggerel can be easy to drown in.
Alli Haapasalo’s Girls Girls Girls explores the disconnect between our ostensibly enlightened present and the seemingly ancient pressures that still torture teenage girls. Emma is a rail-thin perfectionist; Mimmi (Aamu Milonoff) is a punk who feels distant from her mother; and Rönkkö (Eleonoora Kauhanen) is concerned that she might be unable to feel any carnal pleasure. These three very different girls, united by the uncertainty of youth, attempt to navigate sex, work, and their families. (School and academic worries seem absent; perhaps this is what free college does to young minds.) Though what is depicted often veers into shopworn coming-of-age-film clichés, particularly in terms of its thin narrative beats (after little-to-no conflict beforehand, Mimmi and Rönkkö almost have a friend-breakup in the third act, just as you might expect), the fights between the girls – as well as the internal fight each girl has with herself – evinces a deep understanding of what it takes to define yourself while on the verge of womanhood.
The film’s investigations of sex and asexuality feel almost revolutionary; they’re refreshing precisely because they seem so casual. It’s Rönkkö who pursues gratification from various boys, not the other way around. Sadly, she gets nowhere; one cutie in a fabulous fur coat coldly informs her that her advice on how to best move his fingers inside her lacks “passion”. Meanwhile, Mimmi and Emma embark on an intense love affair, but neither gives any big speeches about their newfound sexual identity. What troubles Mimmi instead is the sense that Emma, who has spent her life laser-focused on making the European ice-skating championships, is using their relationship as a means of rebelling against all she’s known – or simply indulging in something different on a whim. Mimmi intentionally, colossally wrecks things with Emma more than once in the hopes of keeping her sweet girlfriend on the right path. And even if the fascination of this alternately selfish and selfless behaviour is undone by the film’s giggly final shot, the dynamic feels very high-school – and very real.
► Girls Girls Girls is in UK cinemas now.