The Finnish title, Kaksi Tarinaa Rakkaudesta, translates as Two Stories About Love... which, for anyone with half a brain (and used to all the stupid tropes of these kind of films), gives away the entire plot as soon as Kaisa - the female lead - approaches the wrong man in a shop in Norway.
The film begins in Turkey, where Kaisa and her two mates conveniently meet three Norwegian men; Kaisa and one of the blokes hit it off and it's genuinely nice to see real chemistry with believable affections growing, rather than them just jumping into bed and the audience having to pretend along with them that they're in love.
Unfortunately, Kaisa is ultra annoying in her incessant questioning of something the man clearly doesn't want to discuss and when the men go back home, she's left regretting letting him get away.
Luckily, Kaisa has the finances and freedom to travel at will and she moves to Oslo, presumably with the hope of bumping into the dude on the street... which, obviously, was never going to succeed if her memories of him prompt her to approach a completely dissimilar-looking bloke to ask if he remembers her from Istanbul (note: it's actually the same actor in both roles, in a deliberate attempt to fool viewers, even though there's no way it's the same character).
Cue a love affair, during which time we wonder if Kaisa's supposed to be the world's worst dance teacher and all of a sudden, her and the new bloke are living in Helsinki... which makes the inevitable all the more ridiculous.
I won't ruin it for those who are blessed to not spot the endings of clichéd flicks like this a mile away, thus can enjoy them more than the rest of us, but - unless this film was partly funded with the stipulation of shooting some portion of it in Berlin - the ending makes no sense whatsoever, even though it was all so predictable a long time ago already.
Verdict: sadly, one of the better Finnish films, which demonstrates how awful things are when I can't really recommend this.
The film begins in Turkey, where Kaisa and her two mates conveniently meet three Norwegian men; Kaisa and one of the blokes hit it off and it's genuinely nice to see real chemistry with believable affections growing, rather than them just jumping into bed and the audience having to pretend along with them that they're in love.
Unfortunately, Kaisa is ultra annoying in her incessant questioning of something the man clearly doesn't want to discuss and when the men go back home, she's left regretting letting him get away.
Luckily, Kaisa has the finances and freedom to travel at will and she moves to Oslo, presumably with the hope of bumping into the dude on the street... which, obviously, was never going to succeed if her memories of him prompt her to approach a completely dissimilar-looking bloke to ask if he remembers her from Istanbul (note: it's actually the same actor in both roles, in a deliberate attempt to fool viewers, even though there's no way it's the same character).
Cue a love affair, during which time we wonder if Kaisa's supposed to be the world's worst dance teacher and all of a sudden, her and the new bloke are living in Helsinki... which makes the inevitable all the more ridiculous.
I won't ruin it for those who are blessed to not spot the endings of clichéd flicks like this a mile away, thus can enjoy them more than the rest of us, but - unless this film was partly funded with the stipulation of shooting some portion of it in Berlin - the ending makes no sense whatsoever, even though it was all so predictable a long time ago already.
Verdict: sadly, one of the better Finnish films, which demonstrates how awful things are when I can't really recommend this.