20/20 Filmsight - Film Criticism by David O'Connell

Finally the gods shined their light on me last night, delivering one of the best flicks of the Brisbane International Film Festival so far. I’d heard quite a bit of positive talk about Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale – probably enough to start second-guessing the other way, really. But my BIFF pal and I wandered out of the cinema last night suitably impressed, or perhaps just relieved that we’d been spared from doing any more time with overrated, under-nourished films.

In terms of fresh ideas, you’d be hard-pressed to top Rare Exports. Writer-director Jalmari Helander has crammed so much fantastic material into his film that the few faults it has just melt away. This is like a kids’ flick from the 80s, full of bright, loopy logic but also laced with some spine-tingling darkness.

It’s December on the Arctic Circle and a bunch of Finnish moose trappers are preparing for their biggest catch of the year. High above them, just over the border into Russia, an ominous cinder cone-shaped mountain is the topic of intense scientific scrutiny. An American-funded team is excavating deep into the rock – their efforts closely observed by young Pietari (Onni Tommila), the son of one of the trappers, who has snuck across the border to see what they are up to.

When, just a few days before Christmas, the mountain falls silent and the trappers’ prized heard is found gutted near the border fence, Pietari, his father Rauno (Jorma Tommila) and their two neighbours, Piiparinen (Rauno Juvonen) and Amimo (Tommi Korpela) soon realise that they will face the darkest yuletide ever, their idea of Santa Claus turned on its head.

Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale is the kind of kids’ flick you thought they’d forgotten to make. Indeed, a whole generation has now grown up not knowing that this sort of thing ever existed. Joe Dante or a young Steven Spielberg would be proud – Rare Exports harks back to such 80s classics such as The Goonies or Gremlins or even Big Trouble in Little China.

You wouldn’t take your six-year-old to see it, but children a little older – maybe 10-12 – will love Rare Exports, and the great thing is that the adults will enjoy it just as much. Helander refuses to split his audience, patronising the young and offering in-jokes to the folks – instead, he plays his whacked out ideas Dean Martin-straight. And best of all, the filmmakers know what and what not to darken for the younger portion of their audience. Rare Exports, on the surface, has plenty of black and blatantly frightening moments, but it keeps the themes bright and nimble and the subtext playful. It’s like the flipside to Toy Story 3.

It’s all committed to the screen with an admirable amount of imagination. You laugh as much at the fleet-footed generation of ideas as you do the actual jokes. It’s a beautiful-looking piece of celluloid too, Mika Orasmaa’s cinematography making the most of the crisp-white locations and in particular the freaky mountain, with its blinking red pilot lights indicating the epicentre of menace.

All this means that the film can be forgiven its faults, which are mostly pesky plot holes that would become spoilers if discussed here. And once again, Rare Exports is largely aimed at a younger audience, so you have to allow it some liberty with the finer details.

The biggest thing that will stand in the way of Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale and a wider audience is what rating it receives when it goes on local release. This is really a PG film, but a few elements could force the hand of the Australian Classification Board. I’m crossing my fingers, but the kids may have to wait and bust this out at next year’s slumber parties. Regardless, this is essential viewing for anybody who enjoys a more demented take on Christmas and is keen for a little genre reinvention.


I say: The best film I’ve seen so far at this year’s festival, Rare Exports is carried to an artistic bull’s-eye upon a wave of brilliant ideas.

See it for: The freakiest batch of Santa’s little helpers you’re ever likely to see.