Maata meren alla (Land below the sea) is a modest film about alienation, family ties, love, longing, and becoming. It is based on a novel with the same title by Riikka Ala-Harja.
Amira Khalifa in her first starring role plays Ida, a young woman of African descent who lives with her adoptive mother in a Finnish small town. Ida has just come out of a depression and is looking to make a new start but she is not having much luck in Finland. At the swimming pool she befriends a gay diving instructor who advises her to travel. Ida's adoptive mother is very active both as union member and as feminist. She tries to intervene in Ida's life by arranging a job at the local factory. Ida rebels and on a whim decides to travel to Berlin where an old study pal of her mother's has an apartment. Here is where the film swerves off track into ridicule, for Ida, supposedly in her late twenties, behaves like a clueless nitwit from the sticks. In the big city and continental culture she displays the stereotypical Finnish qualities of social awkwardness and silence and misinterprets the people around her. Still, a love interest presents himself and a career option opens up, but her strained relationship with her adoptive mother will have to be cleared first before Ida may finally start her new life.
On the whole this is a decent flick, if one overlooks the über-Finnish antics of the protagonist, and it closes on a positive note.
Amira Khalifa in her first starring role plays Ida, a young woman of African descent who lives with her adoptive mother in a Finnish small town. Ida has just come out of a depression and is looking to make a new start but she is not having much luck in Finland. At the swimming pool she befriends a gay diving instructor who advises her to travel. Ida's adoptive mother is very active both as union member and as feminist. She tries to intervene in Ida's life by arranging a job at the local factory. Ida rebels and on a whim decides to travel to Berlin where an old study pal of her mother's has an apartment. Here is where the film swerves off track into ridicule, for Ida, supposedly in her late twenties, behaves like a clueless nitwit from the sticks. In the big city and continental culture she displays the stereotypical Finnish qualities of social awkwardness and silence and misinterprets the people around her. Still, a love interest presents himself and a career option opens up, but her strained relationship with her adoptive mother will have to be cleared first before Ida may finally start her new life.
On the whole this is a decent flick, if one overlooks the über-Finnish antics of the protagonist, and it closes on a positive note.