This Finnish-Hungarian co-production, originating after a wish by President Kekkonen, was reportedly a hit in Hungary but failed completely in Finland, for obvious reasons. The subject - marrying a Westerner to get permission to travel abroad - was close to many Eastern Europeans at the time, but irrelevant to Finns.
As a child, I thought the film was awful. I just re-saw in a cinema, appropriately with a mixed Finnish-Hungarian audience, and it is not as bad as I remembered but not good either. The pace is too slow for comedy, the characters too thin stereotypes for drama, and there are no surprises - some nice details though. The actors are competent, but the technical crew wasn't - there are two scenes with a microphone long visible at the top of the frame!
The wedding sequence seems to have been shot in some regional museum and gives a laughably old-fashioned idea of the Finnish countryside in 1980.
As a child, I thought the film was awful. I just re-saw in a cinema, appropriately with a mixed Finnish-Hungarian audience, and it is not as bad as I remembered but not good either. The pace is too slow for comedy, the characters too thin stereotypes for drama, and there are no surprises - some nice details though. The actors are competent, but the technical crew wasn't - there are two scenes with a microphone long visible at the top of the frame!
The wedding sequence seems to have been shot in some regional museum and gives a laughably old-fashioned idea of the Finnish countryside in 1980.