User Reviews

Have you seen one of the thousands of cookie cutter romantic comedy movies that Hollywood has produced? This is not one of them! If the average romantic comedy is a heart shaped chocolate chip cookie then this movie is a broken heart shaped cookie filled with chocolate chunks and glued back together with frosting. I just saw The House of Branching Love at the Minneapolis International Film Festival this past weekend. The movie was directed by Mika Kaurismäki and is a fantastic dark comedy from Finland.

This film as with many Nordic movies is about relationships, though not in the traditional sense. This film starts with the obvious breakup/divorce of the two main characters in the film, Tuula (Elina Knihtilä) and Juhani (Hannu-Pekka Björkman). The two have been married for a number of years and the marriage seems to just fizzle out, or so we are led to believe at the beginning of the film. The next scene shows us the first glimpse of what will inevitably be trouble. Juhani has written a set of rules that the two of them agree to follow while they share the same house. As Tuula reads the rules we see how ridiculous the rules are and that they more than likely will not be followed. Sure enough that night Juhani breaks a rule and has a girl come over to the house. This is where the movie really takes off. Eventually both Juhani and Tuula have a significant other move into their half of the house and all four of them live in a type of harmony that I have not seen before. The plot then takes an even more insane twist when a crime lord, Yrsa, gets involved. Yrsa, however, happens to be Tuula's mother and when Tuula is mistaken for Juhani's girlfriend Nina we see just how much Juhani does in fact care about Tuula.

The relationships in this movie are not formed or maintained in the typical manner. We first see Tuula and Juhani as their relationship falls apart and we are led to believe that this is the way things will stay (the huge cookie breaks under it's own weight). However, when each of them brings a significant other, Tuula brings in an old flame and Juhani a prostitute who he has payed to live with him, we see that there are ways for them to figure things out. I think that by seeing the other person in a happy (if not healthy) relationship makes both Tuula and Juhani realize that what happened between the two of them wrong (enter the frosting glue). They seem to believe throughout the movie that the other is entirely wrong and that it was not their fault for their broken relationship. I don't agree with either of them in thinking that a problem is entirely one sided. There are always two sides to a problem and in most cases communication will smooth most of those problems out. Later Tuula sees how happy Juhani is and she is jealous because she hasn't had that with him in years. I think that in many cases talking is the best way to solve problems and one of the only ways to do so in a relationship. Juhani should have known that since he is after all a marriage councilor. Eventually the two reconcile their differences and all it takes is some talking, some sympathetic feelings and some sex in a hole in the ground (complete the frosting of the cookie).

The more interesting relationships are the ones that we see between Tuula and Juhani and their boy/girlfriend's. Tuula is trying to make Juhani jealous by having an old flame move in and it is very obvious that he doesn't necessarily want to be there and he is uncomfortable at times. Juhani on the other hand pays a prostitute to pretend to be his girlfriend and they end up having an more honest relationship. In the end though they two significant others fly away together after they realize that they are not really wanted by Tuula or Juhani. I think that these types of quirky relationships should be more common in movies. They make movies more fun to watch because it makes the viewer uncomfortable at times and that is a good thing. Hollywood has made the relationship on screen so cookie cutter that it is almost no fun to watch anymore. There may be a variety of relationships but they all fit into a cookie cutter outline. It was refreshing to see something like this.

Strong women are an ever present force in this movie, they are the gigantic fudge chunks to the traditional chocolate chip. They make a nice compliment to the strange relationships in my opinion. Tuula "wears the pants" in both of her relationships in the movie. She is very opinionated and forceful and she is not afraid to hurt people's feelings. Part of this stems from her troubled childhood which we learn a bit about. Nina helps to break Juhani out of his shell and she is a very strong influence in his life. Yrsa is the head of a prostitution crime family which should be evidence enough of her strength. The women in this movie are very fun to watch and they provide many of the comedic moments as well as many of the very dramatic ones. I really enjoyed the ways that Tuula and Nina would interact, as it usually ended with me giving some sort of chuckle.

This is hands down my favorite of the Finnish films that I have seen. The non-traditional relationships that often lead to very awkward uncomfortable moments combined with the strong female characters really provided a nice balance of comedy and drama. I wish there were more "romantic comedies" like this but unfortunately people like cookies and so Hollywood gorges America with stereotypical romantic comedies.