The Good Son
Strong performances leaven this fairly straightforward tale of male competition
SCREENINGS:
Saturday, September 10, 6:30 p.m.
AMC 10 (10 Dundas Street East)
Sunday, September 11, 10 a.m.
AMC 10 (10 Dundas Street East)
Saturday, September 17, 4:15 p.m.
Scotiabank Theatre 11 (259 Richmond Street West)
Though it’s not to be confused with Joseph Ruben’s grisly Elijah Wood/McCauly Culkin vehicle of the same name, Zaida Bergoth’s second feature shares some of the same content. The “good” son in question is Ilmari (first-timer Samuli Niittymäki, very strong), a brooding 17-year-old whose spent most of his young adult life waiting on his mother, Leila (Elina Knihtilä), a fading actress whose name now seems more likely to appear in the tabloids than on any sort of marquee. Ilmari wastes away his days smoking cigarettes with his mom, mixing drinks for her friends, and keeping the paparazzi at bay.
But when the charming author Aimo (Eero Aho) arrives to court Leila, the streamlined Oedipal dynamic is fittingly triangulated. As Aimo vies for Ilmari’s respect, Ilmari plots to get him out of their summer home (the plots aren’t exactly intricate: he mostly just shoves Aimo around). The Good Son mostly just floats around typical issues of male jealousy and maternal competition. At least until its third reel, when the psychosis of Ilmari’s momma’s boy begins to bubble to the surface, and Leila has to learn to treat her kid as a son, and not some buddy or man-at-hand.