High school sex comedy focuses in on the females
T urn Me On Goddammit has pretty much everything you’d expect from a teen comedy: A sex-obsessed main character desperate to lose their virginity a put-upon single parent with no idea how to deal with their hormone-addled progeny and enough high school politics to remind you why the memories of that part of your life have been permanently repressed. It should be old hat.
Funny how one little twist can make the whole movie seem fresh. By remembering that teen girls get horny too and by dealing with the subject frankly and with a wry sense of humour this Norwegian film turns the tables on the audience’s expectations and ends up surprisingly satisfying.
Fifteen-year-old Alma (Helene Bergsholm) first appears onscreen rubbing one out on the kitchen floor to the dulcet voice of a phone sex operator. Alma’s whole world is based on getting off with magazines rolls of coins or just the fantasies that keep popping into her head despite her best efforts. So when she says a boy she’s been lusting after approaches her at a party and gives her an unexpected (and er erect) poke even her best friends think she made the whole thing up. Branded a “pervo” by her classmates and taunted with shouts of “Dick-Alma” wherever she goes Alma doesn’t know where to turn.
The film’s version of high school is just as cruel as in your average American film but it also feels much more grounded. Instead of cartoonishly stratified social castes we get a group of people who genuinely seem to be sorting out their roles. Some even recognize that Alma’s situation is unfair but don’t want to risk the blow to their social standing that’d come from stepping outside what’s expected. Add in the small-town setting and you get a real sense of the frustrations that surface when you start to notice how limiting your surroundings are.
There’s plenty of anger and ennui in Turn Me On Goddammit which seems about right for a rural Nordic coming-of-age flick but it doesn’t come across particularly heavy. Thanks to Bergsholm’s charming lead (as charming as an angst-addled teen can be at least) and strong turns in the supporting roles the film breezes by. Even if it is a lightweight comedy though it’s one from a perspective that hardly ever makes its way to the screen — and more importantly it’s plenty entertaining.
