Little Wing – Tytto nimeltä Varpu (2016)

Directed by: Selma Vilhunen | 100 minutes | drama | Actors: Linnea Skog, Paula Vesala, Lauri Maijala, Santtu Karvonen, Antti Luusuaniemi, Niinia Sillanpää, Outi Mäenpää

If a twelve-year-old girl in the Netherlands were to drive from Amsterdam to Eindhoven – alone, in a car – she wouldn’t get any further than Amstelveen. She would have caught the attention of fellow road users in no time, no matter when she started her journey. In Finland it is a very different story. Helsinki is of course a big city, with more than 615,000 inhabitants, but beyond that you have tens of kilometers of straight roads, where you can drive for hours without meeting anyone. Or it must be a moose, of course. And so Varpu (Linnea Skog) gets away with it when she decides to drive a car stolen by her boyfriend Anttu (Pyry Rautiainen) from Helsinki to the city of Oulu, more than six hundred kilometers to the north. Although the gas tank is empty at one point, she still manages to reach Oulu. But if that one friendly driver had driven on, that poor kid would still be walking along the Finnish ‘highway’.

Varpu is the main character in ‘Little Wing’ (2016), the feature film debut of Selma Vilhunen, who rose to fame with documentaries with titles such as ‘A Day with Dad’ (1999) and ‘Pony Girls’ (2008). The themes in those movies are not far from those in this one. Varpu lives with her mother Siru (Paula Vesala) in one of the lesser districts of Helsinki. Her father is not in the picture, and that is starting to gnaw at Varpu, especially now that puberty has arrived. Her mother is rather immature for her age. When she has failed her driving test for the umpteenth time, she cries tears and when she feels sad or lonely, she crawls into bed with her daughter. If her mother also forgets Varpu’s twelfth birthday, that’s enough. Varpu enjoys riding her horse, but the girls at the equestrian center are not always nice to her. They come from wealthy families and often still live in the same house with both parents. They teasingly ask Varpu when her mother comes to pick her up, or what kind of work her father does. Wise as she is, Varpu always makes up a story, but inside it gnaws.

And so one evening, when her mother is once again too busy with herself, she seizes her chance. In a stolen Saab she drives to the city where her mother Ilmari Hukkanen (Lauri Majjala) lives, according to her mother. She learned to drive a car from her boyfriend, and she appears to have more talent and patience for it than her chaotic mother. After her long journey, she initially meets the wrong Ilmari Hukkanen, a cold-hearted businessman who does not treat his pregnant wife too kindly. But after the intervention of this Emilia (Niina Sillanpää) and the reunion with her terrified mother, she can finally meet her biological father. Ilmari is a special person to say the least. We immediately understand why Siru has chosen to raise her daughter alone, as her ex-boyfriend turns out to be a paranoid schizophrenic. Varpu, though mature for her age, sees him as an eccentric, muddled artist. Only when she opens the door to her life for him and Ilmari comes to have a look at the equestrian center, the puzzle pieces fall into place for her too.

Scandinavian youth films are often of high quality and do not shy away from addressing serious issues in order to make them tangible and recognizable for young people. ‘Little Wing’ also addresses the necessary ‘grown-up issues’: the problems within a single-parent family, growing up in (relative) poverty, searching for your identity, bullying and of course mental problems. However, Selma Vilhunen keeps it light and sweet. In the style of the film, you recognize Vilhunen’s background as a documentary maker: realistic and unadorned (although you can doubt Varpu’s car ride to Oulu, of course). The young Linnea Skog fits perfectly into that image. Varpu may be small in stature, but she acts more like an adult than her parents. The fact that she is nevertheless still a child is beautifully reflected in her encounters with her father and the way she sees him – at least initially. Deep down you hope she can keep that childish innocence for a while, but the reality decides otherwise. The way in which she then deals with it, is the basis of becoming an adult.

‘Little Wing’ is a warm, entertaining coming-of-age film in which director and screenwriter Selma Vilhunen occasionally allows herself some ‘poetic liberties’ that are not entirely in line with the realistic nature of the film. Nevertheless, we forgive her with love. If only because of the wonderful Linnea Skog, who steals the show as the precocious and endearing Varpu.