Innuendo - Film Review

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Innuendo is a captivating movie about the childhood experiences of two twin sisters and how these experiences shaped their lives. It is a movie about child abuse, sibling rivalry, complicated parent-child relations, religious indoctrination, love, jealousy and murder.

Saara Lamberg wrote, directed and produced Innuendo. She also plays the protagonist and gives a brilliant performance, as do her co-stars -Brendan Bacon and Andy Hazel.

An enigmatic woman, Tuuli, arrives in Australia in search of her identity, after escaping her childhood trauma and rejecting her parents and their values. She leaves behind her native Finland and her twin sister, who is her alter ego. Tuuli is a quintessential duplicitous femme fatale, who becomes entangled in love, jealousy and murder.

The movie is an exploration of the duality of good and evil. It shows the ambiguity of good and evil, when, what is considered good becomes evil, and what is considered evil becomes good. It is a psychological masterpiece.

Innuendo has been created in the tradition of Scandinavian cinema, with apparent strong influences of its greatest master, Ingmar Bergman, especially his movie Persona. Like Bergman's movies, Lamberg's Innuendo is difficult to understand intellectually. Rather it is a sensuous experience.

Another visible influence of Scandinavian cinema on Innuendo is that of Lamberg's compatriot, Petri Kotwica and his acclaimed movie Black Ice. Similarities in terms of double identity, love, jealousy, and the names of two heroines, Tuuli and Saara, are curious.

Tuuli is a fitting name for the heroine of Innuendo. It means 'wind' and, according to Finnish mythology, is the name of the goddess of animals, daughter of the god of the forest. Ben, Tuuli's Australian boyfriend, compares her to an eagle, which signifies liberation from bondage, freedom and majestic power. Innuendo's symbolism is fascinating.

It is an intriguing movie that may be interpreted in a variety of ways and therefore keeps you thinking about it for days. It makes you reminisce about your own childhood. It epitomises the fact that we are all victims of our upbringing, indoctrination and real or symbolic violence that we experience in childhood. Most of us rebel against these childhood experiences as we embark on a search for our own identity to find out who we really are, just as Tuuli did.

Innuendo is a must-see movie.

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