Homesick (2006) Reviews

The intense and bitter Finnish psychodrama Homesick explores the mental breakdown of Sami (Julius Lavonen), an adolescent boy forced into a psycho ward by his severely dysfunctional home life. Quiet, introverted and guarded, he refuses to communicate with the kindly hospital nurse Taneli (Janne Virtanen); when his mother turns up and attempts to regain custody of him, doctors refuse, and when she crops up a second time, the patient refuses. In flashback, the picture documents the reasons for these objections: we watch Sami regress from happy, healthy, well-adjusted teen to complete basket case, thanks to his alcoholic mother's extreme emotional fragility and constant overdependence on him, following an unwanted divorce. Neophyte filmmaker Petri Kotwica writes and directs, and employs heavy stylization, including frantic, hand-held camerawork and yellow-tinged stock. ~ Nathan Southern, Rovi