Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale
Cinema Nova, 08/12/2010
Status: Behind by 2 films
Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale is absolutely absurd. But that’s kind of what I want in a film about an age-old, evil Finnish Santa that steals children.
In the Russian mountains near the Finnish border, a millionaire digs up Santa Claus, buried half a kilometre inside the mountain. Santa’s quite the anti-social, though, and is only interested in eating gingerbread and stealing the children of a nearby Finnish village. He also slaughters the herd – and livelihood – of the village, so the menfolk (TOMMI KORPELA, JORMA TOMMILA and RAUNO JUVONEN) hatch a plan to capture and sell Santa to recoup their losses.
While the men catch Santa, nine year old Pietari (ONNI TOMMILA) frets. He is a charmingly wimpy hero – he spends at least half the film with cardboard taped to his bottom after researching lithographs of Santa beating naughty children – but as his friends start to disappear he gets his action hero on.
Although the idea is original, the film stretches it fairly thin. But the payoff is satisfying and the treatment terrifically straight-faced. And I find it easy to forgive a film that ends in absurdity if that’s exactly where it starts.
