Adults often view the world through weathered eyes, hurdling obstacles and challenges both predicted and unseen through careful expectations. Children, however, typically see the world through pure innocence, believing in the best for people and guiding themselves through optimism and acceptance, and it’s often easy for us adults to forget such open-minded clarity. “Little Wing,” the feature-length narrative film debut of Academy Award-nominated writer/director Selma Vilhunen, teeters the line between innocence and maturity to produce a sensitive, deeply personal and richly introspective look into the mindset of an early teenager (Linnea Skog) coming to terms with humanity’s fragile instability.
A character study that merges gradually into a family drama exploring isolation, dysfunctional parenthood, and mental illness, it’s not defined by its originality but rather its tender familiarity; it’s a cinematic debut that’s sincere and poignant in its exploration of late childhood and early adulthood, one that’s both universally-relatable and distinctly singular in its telling. Gentle like a butterfly and eventually stinging like a bee, Vilhunen makes a sympathetic, heartfelt coming-of-age drama that’s equally appealing to children and adults. Sure, it has little wings, but it’s directed with a big heart and even bigger eyes. It’s beautifully unadulterated filmmaking.
Self-dependent 11-year-old Varpu Miettinen (Skog) is a child expected to become a teen too early. Shorter and more unsuspecting than her peers, she lives a humble, good-intentioned life with her absent-minded, often self-centered mother (Paula Vesala), who barely makes ends meet while continuously failing her driving test. Resourceful-but-lost, her father has remained out-of-the-picture since her infancy and she wants to finally met him. Mom often neglects her requests and merely hopes she’ll accept her new doughy boyfriend Bo (Santuu Karvonen) as her father figure instead. But Varpu remains unsatisfied, both by her frustratingly aloof mother and her continuously-absent father’s presence, and forges her own path.
A couple days after her 13th birthday, Varpu’s ready to connect with her long-lost father, even if her mother doesn’t agree. Having learned to drive through her rebellious friends and their stolen vehicles, she sneaks out of the house one night and drives several miles away from home looking for her father, based on an address her frantic mother recently gave her for Father’s Day card giving. Hoping to reconnect with her estranged parent, she veers into newfound territory doe-eyed and persistent, but things don’t go as expected. She quickly learns how life isn’t nearly as clear-cut as she (and many adults) would hope and, even when she seemingly finds what she’s hoping to discover, she’s left with a resolution that might not fit into her early life neatly.
Like most grown-ups, “Little Wing” often makes you fear the worst for our young protagonist, throwing her into situations where you expect disaster to strike in any-and-all directions. What’s often surprising about Vilhunen’s film, then, is how it keeps things tame, positive and affirming, while never losing its sense of realism and level-headed certainty. And when it does decide to hit you with peril and sorrow, it rightfully cuts deep. This is not a film about optimism and triumph, but it’s not defined by its heartbreak and melancholy either. It sharply balances both extremes to create something quietly telling and considerably perspective, while always mindful of its sense of risk and danger. It’s non-intrusive until it needs to be, and when it does puncture, it aches.
What keeps it softly humming — beyond Vilhunen’s caring eye — are the performances, most notably from our two leads. Finnish tween pop star-turned-actress Skog turns in an exceptionally understated performance, letting her doe-like eyes tell a million words in every scene while allowing her character’s rising development to come naturally with each scene. Vesala’s performance, meanwhile, is a lot showier and emotionally-forceful, but it’s effective in conjunction to Skog, especially within the last act. Their acting is dictated through humbling torment and internal anguish, and they reflect upon each other in insightful, revealing ways. They fuel the other’s fire, appropriately tearing each other down while also building each other up with each contemplative scene. They’re each one half of the film’s beating heart; they both keep “Little Wing” fluttering to a conclusion that’s equal parts heartbreaking and heartwarming.
Authentic and emotionally gratifying, Vilhunen’s debut is an earnest and endearing drama, one that’s often elevated by a lens that’s both solicitous and sweet in capturing this poetically wistful examination of early adulthood and lost innocence. But more so than that, “Little Wing” is an exceptionally personable piece, one that reminds you how both maturity and childlike wonder can be blended so naturally with the right care and attention. It finds harmony in staying true to itself, while accepting a world that expects you to grow up sooner than you’d like. One does not completely lose positivity, however, just as one doesn’t completely accept negativity. “Little Wing” is a piece of confirmation for the soul, and a firm reminder of how to remain faithful and sensible in your everyday life. It’s human in every respect, yet it still finds ways to fly. [B+]
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