LA Times: “Girl picture” review

Eleonoora Kauhanen, left, Aamu Milonoff and Linnea Leino in the movie “Girl Picture.” (Citizen Jane Productions / Strand Releasing)

Review: ‘Girl Picture’ invites you along on a swooning ride of teen passion

LA TIMES on GIRL PICTURE: "Haapasalo finds the right balance between warmth and anxiety in using a boxy frame — sometimes tight, sometimes tall — for Jarmo Kiuru’s textured cinematography."

With all the flushed-cheeks goings-on in the Finnish film “Girl Picture” — a fleet, charged portrait of three adolescent females navigating flights of passion — you could front-load a week’s worth of message-heavy after-school specials.

But thankfully, we’re in the hands of a sensitive, nonjudgmental filmmaker in Alli Haapasalo, who’d rather spark our empathy observing almost-womanhood’s joys and sorrows than be one more moralist with raised eyebrows and ready lessons. In fact, the actual title, more accurately translated into English as “Girls Girls Girls,” better reflects the celebratory aims of Haapasalo’s third feature, reclaiming as it does a phrase typically used to admonish young women in Finland.