Innuendo || movie review

The 2017 independent thriller “Innuendo” celebrated its Tasmanian premiere at the “Stranger With My Face” International Film Festival this month with director Saara Lamberg in attendance. She utilises the film’s small budget by creating a story with a dark and unconventional reality that is shown through its choice of setting and characters. The main theme of individual people having different levels of light and darkness within themselves sends the clear message that humanity will always struggle with its balance between good and bad. The film is a peculiar and forward interpretation of identity, sexuality and artist culture, and is one of the many events that the festival has to offer.

Set in Australia the film centres around Tuuli (Saara Lamberg), a mysterious woman who travels from Finland to the other side of the world for a fresh start at life. She eventually finds herself experimenting with her sexual curiosity by becoming a nude model for art classes. While trying to find her true self Tuuli manipulates other people including the good-natured university student Thomas (Andy Hazel) and the coarse but charming chainsaw sculptor Ben (Brendan Bacon). Eventually she starts to experience disturbing hallucinations involving her peers that are coupled with flashbacks of her abusive childhood and overbearingly religious family. Her meek demeanour is slowly exposed as her true twisted self becomes visible.

Saara Lamberg is mesmerising in her performance of the film’s protagonist by steadily channelling an erratic and unpredictable energy while embodying the unreliable narrator and volatile character. Lamberg displays the same feminist attitude in her performance as she does in real life, sarcastically quipping that men are the assertive ones and women are just bossy after the festival’s screening. Andy Hazel further supports this idea by saying at the festival that a lot of truth was shown in the personal moments of the characters. Hazel’s portrayal of Thomas contrasts Lamberg nicely as his exhibits a passive and shy manner throughout the film. Brendan Bacon’s character Ben however seems to be the polar opposite as his personality is charismatic and introspective, the perfect match for Lamberg.

The film has a focus on parental figures as it reveals that Tuuli’s mother and father are abusive, and that Ben’s parents are deceased. But the film mainly focuses on the balance of light and dark, goodness and evil, within a person and what they are capable of depending on how they are raised. For example, Tuuli has a twin sister named Suuvi (also played by Saara Lamberg) and they both grow up in the same environment but are treated differently because their parents favour one over the other, as a result of this they both see the world differently. Lamberg states that no one is completely perfect or imperfect, there is good and bad in all of us and we are all capable of being good and bad.

The film has already had two screenings at other film festivals in Melbourne and Sydney, even being nominated for best film. Lamberg is also currently developing another feature film that is completely crowd funded, showing that women can be a pioneer, director, producer and actress in this kind of genre and industry without having the ‘necessary’ resources.