SENSUELA

The mad melodramas of Finnish director Teuvo Tulio (1912-2000) are untethered from naturalism, logic or sometimes even good taste. They are a heady combination of surrealist imagery and emotional intensity, operating in the same space as the subversive tales of Sirk and Fassbinder, doused with tears and booze, prostitution and poison.

Tulio’s notorious final film, and arguably his greatest achievement. SENSUELA seems beamed in from an alternate universe where any standards of good taste are completely inverted, in the tradition of Ken Russell. We open on rural reindeer herder’s daughter Laila saving Hans, a badly-wounded German WWII pilot who crash-lands in Lapland. Hans quickly seduces her off to the big city (mysteriously time-warping forward into the swinging Mod Sixties?!) where Laila descends into a polyester maelstrom of fabulous clothes, nudie photography and hippie orgies.