Tom of Finland #2

Sexy while also being informative, Dome Karukoski's Tom of Finland is a much, much better film than the documentary about Touko Laaksonen's life and work, Daddy and the Muscle Academy, which I watched a couple months ago. Karukoski's film makes clear just how repressive the Finnish government was against homosexual sex in the mid-century, and what is so interesting about this is that it goes a long way to explaining Tom of Finland's fascination with the gear (the drag) of the police, of the military, even of the Nazis. One thing we sort of see in the film is the writer processing the violence he's experienced and his real fear of these people by transforming them into erotic figures. It's a fascinating angle on Tom of Finland's work, and one the film really sold well.

I also had somehow missed that Laaksonen had a longtime partner, Veli “Nipa” Mäkinen, with whom he shared a home for most of his adult life. This film shares that story, too, and I fell in love with the actor who played him, Lauri Tilkanen.