Not unengaging Finnish film (there are four) at the Scandinavian Film Festival. With a few standout exceptions (the envy displayed by the Finnish men towards the Swedish film star for instance, which is less about him being a film star I think and more about him just being a fine specimen of Swedishness/maleness) it could have been made almost anywhere and for instance could easily be remade as a Hollywood movie if you could get eight Hollywood actors in their thirties to agree they deserved equal billing/equal screen time (also however the massive amount of drinking in this film which is presented as unremarkable here would have to become notable in an American reading - also there's no class/privilege issues - maybe I'm wrong, maybe it couldn't be easily translated to another culture).
The premise is simple: a group of friends assemble on an island to celebrate one of their number's 35th birthday. They all agree, whimsically I think, to put their phones away for the duration, which is less of a device than you might think although there is quite a good joke revelation pertaining to that, at the very end. There are a lot of tears, lies, truths, some nudity, and a very strange/funny song that the other women sing to Mitzi when they give her her birthday cake.
I looked it up on Finnish Wikipedia, to find that it is director Jenni Toivoniemi's first feature, and that 'the film received eight Jussi nominations at the 2021 gala for best film, directing, screenplay, female lead (Parviainen), male (Niittymäki) and female (Heinonen).' The word 'seurapeli' seems to mean 'board game', 'club game' or 'party game', and so I guess the English title is apt.
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