Dir. Jalmari HelanderStarring. Per Christian Ellefsen, Peeter Jakobi
Have you ever wondered what Christmas would be like if the legend of Santa Claus actually originated with a bunch of dirty old naked guys who kidnapped children? No, me neither. Because it's weird. Fortunately, or unfortunately depending on your current state of mental health, Finnish filmmaker Jalmari Helander did wonder and then he made a film about it.
Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale is the feature length prequel to Helander's short films Rare Exports Inc. and Rare Exports: Official Safety Instructions. It tells the tale of a young boy, Pietari, who is determined to uncover the secret behind the strange happenings in his small town in northern Finland just before Christmas. From a series of explosions caused by a team of excavators on the nearby mountain, to a herd of inexplicably slaughtered reindeer, to mysteriously missing children, something's amiss in the town this Christmas, and Pietari makes it his mission to find out what.
Like the Rare Exports short films, A Christmas Tale points to the absurdity of the traditional Santa Claus myth (delayed spoiler alert, kiddies), by turning our beloved Father Christmas into a creepy villain. Sadly, in translating the original idea to feature length, A Christmas Tale lost much of the tone and humor that made the shorts work so well.
Remember that kid in school that didn't quite fit in with any one group because he tried too hard to be a bit of everything. You know, the one that wore a denim jacket covered in safety pins and Sid Vicious patches, but also played World of Warcraft and then tried out for the football team? Yeah, that's Rare Exports; it just doesn't completely succeed in any one thing. The dark moments weren't quite dark enough to make me feel anything but discomfort, and the funny moments weren't quite funny enough, again just making me uncomfortable. It doesn't even have the decency to be bad enough to be enjoyable out of pity. I'm not sure whose identitiy crisis is worse, the one this film suffers from, or the one thousands of mall Santas across the world will suffer from after seeing it.
It seems the people at Rare Exports headquarters have tried to amend this by slapping the film with the "cult" label. Granted it very well may become a cult film, but that's for audiences to decide, not them. It's cheating. It's like a get out of jail free card (which isn't really cheating, but is definitely not fair). When people claim a film is "destined to be a cult classic" (not their exact words) all I hear is, "We're really banking on DVD sales." It's like a politician who knows he's going to lose an election, focusing his campaign only on a selected minority group, for no other reason than to steal those votes from the leading candidate. Actually its probably nothing like that... just go with it. I'm the expert here.
Anyway, if you've got an appetite for a different kind of Santa film this Christmas, Rare Exports is exactly that. Unfortunately, it's not much more.
Britfilms.tv has my original review and lots more.
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