RATING
Director(s): Tiina Lymi
Country: Finland
Author: Tiina Lymi
Actor(s): Laura Malmivaara, Katja Küttner, Minna Haapkylä
Written by Tom Augustine
Exclusive to Rialto Channel, Finnish screenwriter and director Tiina Lymi’s dark comedy was a sensation in its home country, arriving on our shores in a wave of comparisons to Breaking Bad. Laura Malmivaara stars as an imperious, wealthy real estate agent who turns to crime to maintain her lavish lifestyle in this charmingly twisted moral fable.
Over the course of this year, a lot of the television I’ve watched for review has arrived from Scandinavian countries — Families Like Ours and The Black Swan, two very good, very different series, arrived to us from the same region as Queen of Fucking Everything, which lands on Rialto Channel in December. These series oscillate from dystopia to true crime to satire, but converge under a recurring idea — that all is not well under the sheen of the European region’s internationally renowned peacefulness. They all share a similar, washed-out colour palette befitting the wintry reaches of the area, and all are in conversation (as much ‘Scandi-noir’, the enormously successful vein of crime dramas that form the basis of much of that area’s output, are) with the notion that nations like Sweden, Iceland, Finland and Denmark are some of the safest, most economically secure, crime-free parts of the world. As with most optimistic claims of this nature, there is an underside that is rarely plumbed, and which governments and tourism boards would rather you didn’t look at too closely. Dark comedy Queen of Fucking Everything, from Finnish screenwriter and director Tiina Lymi, takes a sharpshooter’s aim at the well-to-do, upper middle class of Finland, delivering a lacerating exploration of the lengths some will go to preserve the comforts to which they’ve become accustomed, paralleling this with the lengths their nations may go to preserve their own squeaky clean image.
Laura Malmivaara, an actress I was not acquainted with but who turns in excellent, unpretentious work here, plays Linda, a stately real estate agent living a life of general luxury thanks to her marriage to Mikael, a wealthy man of status in Finland. That was the case, at least, before Queen of Fucking Everything kicks off by dropping us in media res into an unexpected crisis unfolding — Linda’s husband has disappeared, leaving behind a staggering amount of debt that Linda is desperately trying to wrap her head around (it quickly becomes clear that this wasn’t a kidnapping or murder — rather, he’s split and left her holding the baby, as it were). Linda is so broke, she can’t purchase a coffee at the swanky cafe she frequents — we quickly learn that most of the possessions in her enormous mansion have been repossessed, and she’s taken to stealing food from tables during business lunches. In jarring flashbacks, she’s seen clutching a high-price blender as pieces of art and furniture are removed from the house. As with Queen of Fucking Everything’s clearest American counterpart, Breaking Bad, it is not so much the financial stressors of Linda’s financial situation that are cause for concern as the way it might reflect on her within the carefully constructed social ecosystem that she’s built of financial security and status — the loss of pride is more fatal than even the loss of food, housing, and so on. Thus, like Walter White, Linda decides to turn to crime to maintain her lifestyle — and like Walter White, she finds she has a natural aptitude for it.
Lymi’s approach to the material places us directly alongside Linda, the easier to telegraph the justifications for our antiheroine’s transgressions. Malmivaara has something of the glacial yet weirdly anonymous sheen of the high profile businesswoman one might picture in their head when prompted, one that wouldn’t necessarily be out of place in Remuera delis or Mission Bay shopfronts. Lymi contrasts this with Linda’s foil — a onetime friend from childhood named Marke (Katja Kuttner) who lives on the other side of the poverty line, and who provides a gateway into petty crime for our protagonist. Marke’s unabashed optimism, and the way it contradicts Linda’s sour disposition, runs the risk of falling into a twisted caricature of the ‘positive poor’ trope, but the performances maintain a level of warmth and chemistry that largely evaporate any concerns. Queen of Fucking Everything is a writer’s show, first and foremost — its clinical, unvarnished visual style doesn’t insist on itself, sometimes to its detriment. There’s a modern, streaming drama sheen to proceedings that undercuts the vivid depiction of upstairs-downstairs that Lymi explores as the show unfolds. The show is best as it begins to contrast the underworld of Finland with the luxurious, anonymous spaces of the upper class. As with Breaking Bad, much of the show’s tension is in forcing its antihero into a space they’re unfamiliar with, only to find themselves exerting a strange influence that comes with an inbuilt notion of superiority attached to their social standing. For Walter White, that notion came from his fragile masculinity. For Linda, it’s economic superiority. As Linda descends further into amoral territory, the underbelly of Scandinavia is further exposed to the light.
Queen of Fucking Everything Premieres on Sky’s Rialto Channel, Tuesdays from 9 December, 8.30pm.