Directed by Jannicke Systad Jacobsen. Starring Helene Bergsholm, Henriette Steenstrup, Julia Schacht, Matias Myren Club, Light House, Dublin, 76 mins
Hell is boys and lipgloss. In the sleepy fictional Norwegian borough of Skoddeheimen, 15-year-old Alma is grappling with omnivorous hormones and polysexual daydreams. When mom is on shift at the local turnip factory, our young, perennially horny heroine takes to sex chat lines.
Everyone Alma meets – really, everyone – is fodder for sexual fantasies, none more so than Artur, the tall, monosyllabic boy from down the street.
When Artur exposes himself to Alma, however, her friends are not inclined to believe her account of events. He denies it, of course, and Alma suddenly finds herself out of favour in the schoolyard.
Never mind the sex; director Jannicke Systad Jacobsen’s sharp, bittersweet comedy is mostly about the mean kids and the shoe-gazing.
Alma’s inner-life, once a riot, is soon played out in stark black and white images. Repeated shots of dreary small-town avenues deaden her existence even further.
Marianne Bakke’s bleached cinematography dovetails perfectly with a tart, deadpan script and Helene Bergsholm’s unflinching performance.
Hilariously, the film has been retitled since its American release when the US distributor removed “God” from the poster so as not to deter decent Christian folk from watching a Scandinavian teen masturbation film. We doubt the same demographic would warm to the film’s frank girl talk.
At its best and most beautiful, Turn Me On, Godammit! boasts the bluntest, realest girls we’ve seen all year. The fem-speak more than justifies the clipped running time.
