Осенний бал (2007) Online

Finally an Estonian film that combines "international" know-how in film-making with a story that is at the same time embedded in the Estonian context and universal. The film describes the life of a series of characters in Lasnamäe, a rather grey bloc house area in Tallinn. And the good news: it avoids all the clichés that could come up when thinking about such depressing neighborhoods. Sügisball is deeply human and the characters are all very complex. The movie shows "the human condition" in autumn colours without abandoning all hope. Visually it is very impressive how Lasnamäe is shown. In some shots the audience is literally diving into this monster out of concrete. We see the daily fight of the protagonists to find love and human contact in an environment that "was created for the future". Full of warmth and depth the film depicts the Lasnamäe in all our minds. Very convincing work!

The human emotions are a tough gig. Many of us occasionally (if not always?) linger in self-doubt, or in doubt in a general sense. We rarely speak our mind and if we do, odds are it'll be considered a pretty tasteless thing to do. We are under various pressure points which correlate with relationships or society laws/expectations and mainly consist of getting hurt one way or another. Its a gargantuan path every human being has to take. In a way, Autumn Ball (Sügisball), based on the novel by one the far most best novelists and play writers of our time in Estonia - Mati Unt, is a story about walking that path. Its been said that in order to live a perfectly fulfilled life, one must find oneself. But its not without trials one must face before obtaining that. Honesty, the sincerest human emotion, is one of the ground ideas Autumn Ball is based on. As M.Unt used to live most of his life under Sovjet rule, he sure knew that saying something didn't always equal meaning it. Therefore his characters dwelled in belief that the life they were living was false in a sense of not being true to oneself. They were captured into an everlasting loop of figuring out the right move and thus, by acting on it, being able to gain redemption. Symbolically, each of the main characters (Mati, Theo, Maurer, and in a way, also the single mother) are able to obtain this aim. However, this doesn't happen quickly nor suddenly and more importantly, not without consequences to one's actions. Not by accident does my comment's subject mention "dance". Personally for me, Maurer's honest, pure, self-forgetting dance in the darkness of the discotheque, has all the metaphorism needed to unlock this whole cinematic experience. Its a dance about breaking free, forgetting oneself and eventually, through pain which one could only understand in a sub-conscious level, re-gaining oneself renewed and turning into a person. Without a doubt, its an action out of desperation. One's ultimate need to be someone. Or, as, paraphrasing the word of character Mati, being the opposite of 'just an automate'. The idea of "dance", however, shouldn't be taken literally and only based on this one situation I wrote about. In a way, it could also represent the most basic (and thus, something with most pain involved) human need - need for another human being by one's side. For me, its most beautifully illustrated by the short, albeit meaningful relationship between the little girl (daughter of the single mother) and an old man who lives alone, eating his cereal and the only thing which brings somewhat joy in his life is a little, black, monkey who dances to him when the old man winds it up. This dance of something lifeless, but yet of something so precious and important to someone, is perhaps one of the most beautiful scenes ever I have seen in a movie. Anyway, after one incident when the old man re-appears by the fence of the kindergarten yard and gives girl a candy, he's casted away and called pervert. A bit later, single mother and the girl are getting home in a bus or in a tram, and the girl asks whats a pervert, mother doesn't answer, only looks away and smiles just a little. Possibly next day, she is called to kindergarten because her daughter had went missing. While she shouts and cries out, we see the girl coming back, holding the same black, wind-up monkey the old man use to have. Few situations later, we can see the old man sitting on his bed, and laughing. A long and pure, honest laugh that makes him gasp for air later. This was his redemption - being able to interact with someone who might understand the simple joy he was having only to himself all this time. The most tragic-comical character is Mati, who in a way, could be interpreted as the novel's author himself. His girlfriend leaves him and he starts a continual rampage in local bars (where mainly young and/or middle-aged intelligence of Tallinn seems to hang out) trying to find himself his "second-part", the one which he lost. His redemption, however, is re-finding his girlfriend who, after being awhile with another man, comes back to him out of love she feels towards him. The deep hug they are having in the middle of dozens empty alcohol bottles is where the movie draws its last chord and stops. Maurer and Theo, while being shown as people one could possibly despise, each find their redemption as well. For one, its for once speaking his mind and for the other, unleashing all the rage upon symbolically something he has been hating all these years while being a desk clerk in some bar for intelligent, educated people, "upper side" of the food chain so to speak - the hate towards something that is "better" and "smarter" than he is. Also, battering to death the supposed great actor/playwright could be interpreted as "death of the author". As you can see, its hard to write about anything else but the story, but before finishing up, I'm trying communicate some of the cinematic perfection. Camera work, also the picture editing were extremely beautiful (the changing sets of late evening streets of Tallinn with only street lights burning and cars driving by was riverting). The actors, all of them, were top-notch. I have always believed that when a movie has extremely good main leads but also very good supporting cast, even in really short roles (incident in super market jumps to mind, also the boss of Theo's), the movie isn't just good, its perfection. I think its a piece of cinema which is transcendent in time and land borders and thus, in a way speaking to everyone of us dependant of our nationality. After all, there are everywhere "boxes, and in those boxes, there are people who want to be happy.".

Thanks for reading this.

Autumn Ball (Sügisball) is first feature length film by young and talented film director Veiko Õunpuu. Autumn Ball is very surrealistically real. Pasteltones and sleepiness and soundtrack that created the mood and atmosphere. Autumn Ball is talking about different people who are all lost something and now trying to find it. It's full of complex characters.

Autumn Ball is full of great cast also who make this all possible. Rain Tolk is definitely one of the most talented young male actors in Estonia at the moment.

I can't wait Veiko Õunpuu's next film. He showed his talent in Autumn Ball. Let's hope he'll do it again.

From those lands which have been in the stronghold of the former UdSSR and where any form of creativity has been strangulated systematically, there is normally not much to await regarding advanced culture. The few Estonian films that are at present (end of 2009) available of international DVDs, are thus practically worthless. But not so Sügisball (2007). It tells, partly serially and partly parallel, the actual stories of five or six couples living in the same typically Communist tower-block where the windows must have been recently substituted but the money was lacking in order to get the isolation material into the wall. Because, in Communist times, most apartments were not rented, but owned by their tenants, we also see how different they look: starting with the poor, booth-like interior of the hairdresser, passing the roomy private-library of the writer/drinker and arriving at the fancy penthouse-stylish flat of the architect.

The people in this movie are basically potential suicides, drinkers, hopeless, betrayers and betrayed, desperate housewives, children without any clear future. We see pictures from one habitation-silo, but they are representing the basic atmosphere of a whole land at the geographical transit from East and West and at the temporal transit between Sowiet dictatorship and a boundless but insecure freedom. The style of the movie is practically a full-copy of that of Kaurismäkis films. I wonder, if the director made this decision deliberately or if there is something coming up like a "Fenno-Estonian movie-style Koine". Fact is: The Kaurismäki-style is so laconic and so light-less that by its means alone it is sufficient to describe despair and hopelessness. However, the director's decision was good. Film-style and story are "isomorphic". Finland has in the person of Aki Kaurismäki the "Finnish Fassbinder". Perhaps Estonia has gotten now in the person of Veiko Öunpuu the "Estonian Fassbinder". I would be happy for Estonia. Like all Fenno-Ugric lands, it has a grand potential of culture, history and metaphysics.

My absolutely favorite Estonian film today and ever! It's about happiness and love (characters live life without love, very depressing and empty life). "Sügisball" is based on beautiful book by Mati Unt. Director said this film is for people with gentle soul and weak liver. Characters in this film are so real, they give foreign viewer very good idea about Estonia in post-Soviet timing. Beautiful music score, 10 star cinematography, final results strong and sophisticated. Best of all characters is probably architect Maurer (and not because I like him!) But all others are also deep and well-designed. May be director can be called Estonian Altman? I think so.

Considering the close geographical, ethnic and linguistic connections between Estonia and Finland, it is a shame how few Estonian films get proper commercial releases here in Finland. In spite of my limited knowledge about the small country's cinema, I enjoyed director Veiko Õunpuu's first feature film Autumn Ball a lot.

Based on a 1979 novel by Mati Unt but set in present day, the film examines the separate but intertwining lives of several people living in the colossal Soviet era housing units in the Lasnamäe district of Tallinn. Mati (Rain Tolk) is a bohemian writer who has just been left by his wife (Mirtel Pohla), while Maurer (Juhan Ulfsak), a trendy architect, is still together with his girlfriend Ulvi (Tiina Tauraite) despite his growing sense of disillusion with his life and the people around him. Theo (Taavi Eelmaa) works as a doorman and is also completely bored with his job, coping with his frustration by seeking numerous sexual encounters with various women. Laura (Maarja Jakobson) is a single mother of a young daughter Lotta (Iris Persson), who is in turn approached by a middle-aged Finnish barber named Kaski (Sulevi Peltola), upsetting her mother and caretaker.

Life in the suburb appears to be highly forlorn; the methods to escape the banal reality range from getting drunk and having a lot of meaningless sex to just watching television or making seemingly obnoxious but secretly sincere advances to whoever is close. Although the overall mood remains desolate almost all the way throughout, there is plenty of deadpan comedy to be found here and there, such as Mati's unsuccessful attempts of stalking his wife, discreetly buying pornography or talking his way out of getting a parking ticket. The film also avoids judging the characters despite their flaws, particularly Kaski, whose true nature is cutely implied even when he is shown little respect inside the story world. Finnish veteran actor Sulevi Peltola is as good as always in his small role, but the Estonian actors deliver enjoyable performances in their quiet roles too.

Narrowing it all down to just the most common elements shared by all the characters, the film's theme could be said to be loneliness and difficulty of communication. Õunpuu utilizes many visual techniques to emphasize the states of mind of his characters: the sickly greenish glow of the exterior scenes at night and the angular shape of the towering apartment buildings against a cloudy sky look great per se, and the carefully planned mise en scène of the wide static shots of run-down urban landscapes follow the tried and true traditions of art cinema beautifully. A spoken reference to the works of the Swedish director legend Ingmar Bergman also cements Autumn Ball's thematic connection to the continuum of similar efforts by earlier filmmakers. However, the film does not only consist of quiet long takes like many stereotypical art films; Õunpuu moves the camera whenever necessary to follow his characters in their daily (and nightly) wanderings, even getting outright shaky at points.

Even if the director's reluctance to provide neat little conclusions and some story lines receiving more attention than others result in there being a risk of the whole feeling slightly incoherent, it is always pleasant to see this type of visually driven storytelling amidst the talky soap opera style of many less skilled directors. The constantly compelling atmosphere keeps Õunpuu's collection of human fates fascinating from start to end, so Autumn Ball can be unhesitatingly recommended to all admirers of good-looking and tragic but sometimes also hopeful stories.

Sugisball (2007)

For an American, this is a great insight into ordinary life in Estonia, which is one of three small countries on the western rim of the Soviet Empire, and just south of Finland on the Baltic Sea. The paths of several ordinary people, mostly young people, are interwoven in a set of vignettes that complicate as these people live very contemporary and European style lives, but with a palpable sense of oppression. It's fascinating. It's supposed to be a Soviet era apartment complex, and has the trappings of the dystopia that represents, but the people are individualistic and expressive without a feeling of repression.

What presides more clearly is a feeling of sadness and depression. Sometimes there is distrust, other times downright abuse and brutality. There is very little joy, and very little love, at least in the open way we think of it. And so because of all this the movie bristles with irritations and perceptions about the normal world. It's a slice of life, done with sensitivity. It actually reminded me of some Scandinavian films I've seen in the last decade. Another review remarks that it has a Finnish echo (I just read this after making my own point), so maybe there is something to the film industry on the fringe of Europe, not overwhelmed by American/British movies, and perhaps feeling the oppression of the Soviet era in its art scene. And there is an echo of climate and light.

A key scene, certainly, toward the end, has a submissive coatcheck man release his pent up frustrations against a highrolling patron, who happens (with a bit of irony, I'm sure) to be a director. What does he direct? "Relationship comedies." And this (because it's so impossible an idea for this world, maybe?) sends the coatchecker into a rage. It's overdone, but it's followed by an older man laughing hysterically, all by himself on his bed, and it gives a little depth to the whole enterprise.

"Sugisball" (which means Autumn Ball) doesn't really make a case for why it's valuable, or special. I mean, besides being heartfelt and nicely penetrating, and focused on something that will someday soon seem historical, there is no terrific larger point, larger than its own subject. Maybe this is enough. It's totally absorbing, with a large array of actors, most of them very convincing. There are some touching scenes, some frankly sexual ones, and everything is very everyday. It may not be transforming, but it's superb in its own way. Take it for what it is.

Veiko Õunpuu could have done something meaningful by staking out new ground or a new vision from a unique eastern European perspective. Instead he decides he wants to make an existential-angst/ennui type of "made in France" film to fit in with other "cool" western European cinema. Literally every scene is a copy of other clichés from other European films. The director wanted to stake a "me too" claim and he has succeeded in that, nothing more. There is nothing uniquely Estonian, about the plot/narrative.

At over two hours, with many scenes shot in real time mode, it is torture to watch. Even one hour into the film, we still don't have empathy for any of the characters. The suffering of each character is rigidly imposed and artificial.

AVOID! Save your eyes and mind.

Usually, I like seeing movies about cultures that we don't often see, and so an Estonian movie should be an addition to that number. Unfortunately, Veiko Õunpuu's "Sügisball" ("Autumn Ball" in English) doesn't show us anything except people leading miserable lives. Seriously, I couldn't identify ANY real purpose to the movie. I spent a weekend in Estonia and had a good time, but this movie makes it look as if nothing pleasant ever happens there. I would have really hoped that the northernmost Baltic country could put together something at least a little more interesting than this.

So, just avoid this piece of prügi (look up what that means in Estonian).

Movies like this are easy to like. Dramatic, brutal stories told with black humor, interwoven in a way that makes it all a journey into a theme. Magnolia and Shortcuts comes to mind as great examples of this. Sügisball is a good attempt with high ambition, but sadly it fails to follow through on it.

Perhaps if the movie was a bit longer it would not be as obvious, but the characters within the stories told are all to similar. Not only in their loneliness (which, to me, seems to be the central theme of it all), but also in their situation, age, etc. I wish the stories were a bit more varied, as it would not have made the movie as dull as it was at times. But as mentioned, this could maybe have been fixed by shortening it by quite a bit.

That said, there are some great scenes in this movie, and some interesting and memorable characters.

SUGISBALL(Autumn Ball) (dir. Veiko Ounpuu) The film is a series of interconnected stories of disparate characters who live in a dreary housing complex in Tallinn, Estonia where the ugly environs amplify the emotional separation. The film's tone is one of deadpan 'Black Comedy' that communicates histrionic sadness and pent-up romantic longing that at times comes across as mildly amusing. One extremely funny segment (that had nothing to do with the movie) was where an overweight, assistant doorman impersonates Michael Jackson's music video,'Beat It'. This can only be seen to be believed and is nothing short of hysterical. Overall, the film provides very little resolution, but the film's attitude and spirit are somewhat reminiscent of Baltic directors Ingmar Bergman and Krzysztof Kieslowski.

The districts of soviet block houses are still the huge problem both for city architects as well as society. On the one hand it is being contemplated what does it mean to live there, what is the future of these districts and what is their social status. On the other hand, contemporary city planning is still surprising as newly built houses quite often have even worse quality and appearance compared to the soviet ones, there are no recreational zones being planned or even any landscape around them at all.

This impact on one's self-identification, personal and social relations is being analyzed in Veiko Õunpuu "Autumn Ball" (2007), freely based on the same titled novel (1979) by popular Estonian writer Mati Unt. Movie shows us lives of 5 random, almost unrelated with each other people and no special story is being told. The most important here is to trace loneliness, hopelessness, sadness, inhospitality… Which is tightly connected to the one thing relating all the main characters – soviet block district.

Estonians can recognize the exact district of Lasnamäe in the movie, while others can easily relate this district to some of their own city, but finally neither exact place, nor exact time here is important. Time of Unt's novel is seventies, place – Mustamäe district (while Lasnamäe hasn't been built yet). As the movie is freely based on the novel, we can find some differences, for example, in the novel, opposite to the movie, architect sees the district in the positive and optimistic light. In the novel time block houses were the only and quite alluring escape from sharing one flat with unknown people or slums, for some it was even a prestigious place to live in and at least they had a better infrastructure (with parks and other recreational places while now all the empty space between block houses is used for malls and parking lots). However, finally the idea of this kind of district as a lonely and disconnecting from any social relations place is kept both in the novel and in the movie.

Characters represent different social groups, their district is not a closed ghetto for the poor. Young architect whose relationship with a girlfriend is based on boredom, writer who drinks alcohol and stalks his ex more often than writes something, immigrant Finnish barber, lonely worker-class mother whose only close person is her young-aged daughter, the Don Juan cloakroom attender constantly turned down by women because of his low social class.

The place of the story is shown as closed and without hope to escape it. Camera never leaves for the old town or other districts. The kindergarten is paled not only by a metal fence, but also the same high blocks, that are hiding any patch of the sky. For the closing shoots of the scenes director usually chooses a wide view: characters are getting deeper into the inhospitable huge jungle of block houses. The only landscape around is wastelands full of waste. The important motive of waste is repeated several times: while stalking his ex-girlfriend writer steps onto the garbage box to see her window better, driving drunk he hits the same boxes with a car (even if he his first intention was to drive into the tree, but unfortunately there's no tree at all!).

But most importantly there's no sense of safety, which is impossible if you don't know your neighbors, if you don't say "Hi" to them, or simply when you don't have a nice environment, lighting in the night and a feeling that there's someone taking care of you. No one trusts each other, the communication is minimal and suspicious, and of course no community and attention to each other. In one of the last scenes cloakroom attender drags out a drunk customer from the restaurant and right there in the open wasteland he is beaten to death, but this incident stays unnoticed. In this indifferent environment a girl can be kidnapped in the daylight and teachers eyes and no one will give a way on a narrow pavement to a disabled in a wheelchair. The only way to feel real contact here is sex. It is the only moment when people are able to get closer and feel a short flash of happiness. Besides that people are trying to forget their loneliness and miserableness in the superficial parties, with a lot of alcohol, or in the better world offered by television.

The movie can be and is criticized for being totally not original, every scene is said to have been seen already in other European movies. Might be, but still it perfectly represents big problems of city planning and social sphere, which are still present in districts like this. Landscape and environment is important and let this movie remind it to everyone who seem to forget it one more time.