It’s time for the Leeds International Film Festival again and this Finnish film is a solid if low-key drama that doesn’t fall too far into simple feelgood territory. There was something about the production package which seemed vaguely familiar but as I hadn’t researched the film before the screening I didn’t realise that this comes from the same team that made the Finnish-Estonian film The Fencer in 2015 with director Klaus Härö, writer Anna Heinämaa and cinematographer Tuomo Hutri.
One Last Deal is based on a familar dramatic scenario with a central character study. Olavi (Heikki Nousiainen) is an art dealer hanging on, beyond retirement age, to his rented shop premises in central Helsinki. Like many people in their 70s reflecting on what they have achieved over a long life, he hankers after ‘one last deal’ that might justify his long struggle in the art world. He’s a widower and he hasn’t kept up with technological change, allowing himself to become a curmudgeonly old man with only one real friend, a younger dealer facing similar problems but doing slightly better in his shop in the face of online competition.
Around the same time that Olavi comes across an item in an auction sale that seems to be undervalued, he gets a call from his daughter Lea (Pirjo Lonka), now divorced and with a teenage son Otto (Amos Brotherus). She wants her father to take her son on work experience. Can the curmudgeon cope with the idea of a bright teenager careering about his gallery? It’s clear that there will be two narrative lines which will come together – the deal and the family tensions.
I enjoyed the film and especially the central performance. Helsinki, from the street of galleries and the auction house to the high rise modern luxury hotel and the outskirts where Otto and Lea live, is attractively presented and the search for provenance of the painting that Olavi identifies as a potential ‘last deal’ is intriguing, especially in emphasising the Finnish experience of the influence of Russian culture. It occurs to me now that the narrative is similar to Formentera Lady (Spain 2018) with the grandfather-daughter-grandson triangle and to others I can’t remember the titles of. There is also something similar in terms of family and a work/personal interest tension in The Puzzle (US 2018). All of these family narratives are potential melodramas that are either muted by or enhanced by the other narrative about work/personal interest according to taste. As the various festival reviews suggest this modest but nicely judged 95 minute film could well appeal to audiences. Personally, I think the film might have taken either the family melodrama or the chase for a ‘final deal’ a bit further but Klaus Härö clearly knows how to pitch a film for local and international markets and One Last Deal should satisfy many audiences.
The Case for Global Film 