A group of UNESCO researchers comes to Finland to observe the culture and Midsummer traditions. The team (Eino Krohn, Ismo Kallio and Numidia Vaillant) travels around encountering various people and habits, and soon develop a personal relationship to the country with the help of a couple of lovely women.
The film was originally an attempt to create more meaningful Finnish cinema than the usual comedies and melodramas. It's also a quasi-outsider's look to Finland, since it is all Finnish-made but presents the country as something strange and foreign. The narrator's lines are rather old-fashioned and literary as if the film was an old documentary, probably intentionally although it also adds a hint of pretension to the mix. The many blue-tinted night (or is it day?) scenes all show that the filmmakers were ambitious and reaching for something new, but unfortunately their effort hasn't aged all well, as it drags in the middle quite heavily. Elina Salo is as fresh and lovely as always though, and the film can be recommended as a rare novelty for anyone interested in Finland. I wonder if a foreigner's perception of the movie would differ from mine.
