C108 review

Dublin: Salla Tykkä at Meeting House Square

Salla Tykkä: film stills from Thriller (top), Lasso (middle), and Cave (bottom); courtesy Temple Bar Properties

 

Lasso - the first film in Salla Tykkä's trilogy Cave - opens with a young woman jogging down a suburban street. Looking through the window of a house, she is confronted by her own reflection, but also sees a bare-chested young man skillfully leaping through a spinning lasso. She begins to cry and the camera moves away, revealing a back garden with its half-melted snow. The thaw exposes the debris and waste beneath the whiteness. The film is set to the theme tune of Once upon a time in the West. Subverting the representation of gender and the construction of the male spectator embodied in classical Hollywood films, Tykkä presents a female voyeur and a masculine object. However, this feminist sentiment is only one element of this emotionally intense and enigmatic piece.

The second film is perhaps the most complex. Thriller represents an earlier period in the life of the same woman. A man ties a sheep to a tree as a woman collects branches. In a nearby house a teenage girl, who resembles the lead character in The exorcist, lies on a bed. The theme from Halloween plays as the man unties the sheep and leaves it outside another house. The girl runs through the forest and into this house. Observing herself in the mirror, she picks up a rifle and shoots the sheep. As it lies dead in the bloodstained snow, the woman collecting branches lights the bonfire. The scenario clearly signals the end of innocence and coming of age.

The final film, Cave, refers to the science-fiction genre, depicting the same character in the future. She is startled as she attempts to plant flowers in the snow. She runs into a cave and finds three men drilling, one of whom shines a torch into her face. Eventually she finds a way out onto a beach, which is reminiscent of the final scene in Planet of the apes. The woman appears serene as a utopian mood is evoked.

The screening of the Cave trilogy in Meeting House Square complemented the content of the films. The modernist architecture depicted throughout the trilogy was mirrored by the built environment in which it was projected. The positioning of the audience allowed for identification with the cold exterior shots presented and the various viewpoints from within and outside buildings. Tykkä has taken elements from three genres of mainstream cinema which are characteristically misogynistic. While deconstructing their chauvinism, she makes use of some of their conventions, not to communicate a complete narrative but to express three very different emotional experiences in a woman's life.

Catherine Lyons is a film-maker based in Dublin.

Salla Tykkä: Cave, Meeting House Square, Temple Bar, Dublin, February 2004