Naisenkaari

At the age of 46 the Finnish director Kiti Luostarinen philosophises about the question what it means to live in a female body and what it is like to develop from a girl to a woman, to bloom, to age and eventually to die. At her age she can review her mother‘s life, feel herself grow older and see her daughter change into a woman. In her documentary, Luostarinen may present as many as fifty Finnish women from 4 to 90 years old, but the tone remains essayistic. She does not use any so-called experts or obligatory interview fragments. Luostarinen approaches the subject from a personal angle. With sufficient self-irony and a great sense of humour she acts as the narrator. Both young girls and elderly women tell about their experiences and feelings, concentrating on the development from girl to grandmother. At times she interrupts her film essay with fictitious scenes, in which she makes an ironical plea in favour of the iron brassiere and a woman cherishes her extracted fat in a preserving jar. Expanding hips, flabby buttocks and sagging breasts are usually camouflaged, but Luostarinen demonstrates the beauty of round tummies, because: ‘Oldness liberates you of false belief‘.