A gay woman struggles to cope in the repressive home of her bourgeois father on the eve of WWII in Helsinki in Tuija-Maija Niskanen’s haunting period drama.
In this beautiful, poignant Swedish-language drama by Finnish director Tuija-Maija Niskanen, a gay woman, Valerie (Pirkko Nurmi) struggles to cope in the repressive home of her haute bourgeois father on the eve of WWII in Helsinki. We witness key moments in her childhood and life as a young adult with her cruel father and passive mother, as she determines to follow her heart.
Niskanen’s film is infused with the spirit of Ingmar Bergman’s period dramas and features many of his regular collaborators, including actors Gunnar Björnstrand and Stina Ekblad (the latter, who plays Valerie’s lover, starred as the androgynous figure of Ismael in Fanny and Alexander the following year). Sweden and Finland paved the way to greater LGBTQ+ equality in the 1980s – the repressive society depicted in The Farewell shows just how far they had come.