European Films

Anticipating the 2006 football World Cup (the film’s ending is actually scheduled to take place during that event), the winning comedy FC Venus from Finland's Joona Tena succeeds where previous examples failed, simply because it has a heart. Football comedies are usually dire because they believe more in caricatures than characterisation (they are so formulaic, it is normally possible to tell who will win about ten seconds in) but all good comedies have a heart and FC Venus wears its heart right up its sleeve. The film was remade in German with the same title and could be remade everywhere where football is a beloved game, though it will be hard to equal the heartfelt performances of the Finnish original.

Its story is the heterosexual variety on Iceland's Strákarnir okkar (Eleven Men Out) and Germany's Männer wie wir (Guys and Balls), both films in which a gay footballer was forced to leave the team when his sexuality comes to light and where he forms his own team exclusively made up of gay men to play his old team and take revenge. In FC Venus, the rivalling team is made up of women, more precisely women who are fed up with their football-crazy husbands and boyfriends, who all play in what is possibly the worst team in Finland (maybe even beyond) and who, to make things worse, plan to go to Germany for the World Cup instead of enjoying the summer holidays with their female companions.

The women challenge the men to a bet: a football game just before the World Cup. If the women win, the men will never even speak about football again (“Why are they so football crazy anyway? They never win!”) and if the men win, they are allowed to go to Germany, forsaking a summer holiday with their partners. Though FC Venus is frontloaded with laughs and unnecessarily complicates matters at the 11th hour, the final battle between the sexes is about as exhilarating as they come, choreographed and filmed to perfection in a soaking thunderstorm.

Though the team’s supporting characters are filled in with the broad brushstrokes of clichés (the virgin, the gay companion, the Beckham lookalike, the former pro), the film’s main characters are fully rounded, brought to life by actors who carry their demanding roles with surprising agility and warmth. Minna Haapkylä (Lapsia ja aikuisia -- Kuinka niitä tehdään?/Producing Adults) plays Anna, the leader of FC Venus -- the name of the impromptu women's team. Her football-crazy companion (though not husband) is played by Petteri Summanen (Paha Maa/Frozen Land), who plays Pete, one the players of FC HeMan.

Summanen and Haapkyla are as natural a couple as they come: they bicker and they fight, but it is clear that they love and need each other (this is especially noteworthy since Haapkylä's real-life husband, Hannu-Pekka Björkman, plays another team member of FC HeMan). The couple is aided by Laura Malmivaara and Taneli Mäkelä, who impress as a professional player and grumpy coach respectively. Director and co-writer Joona Tena knowns that these characters need to be convincing for the comedy to work, and he gives them all the space that they need. On the technical side, cinematography by Jarkko T. Laine is the polar opposite of his atmospheric and misty work on Äideistä parhain (Mother of Mine), giving FC Venus a crystal clear summer look and imaginatively staging the football sequences. 

This film was shown as part of the Variety’s Critics’ Choice: Europe Now sidebar at the 2006 Karlovy Vary Film Festival.