Review: Minä valitsin sinut
A female couple’s love affair in a light, painful and recognizable way
On the small stage of the Helsinki City Theatre, we will see the love story of a female couple, which is sure to be relatable to the general public.
One cannot ignore how thoroughly heteronormative imagery still dominates the depictions of relationships and love in the 2020s. Director Milja Sarkola and author Laura Lehtola have together adapted the performance I chose you based on Lehtola’s novel published in 2020. It follows Elisa and Saara’s journey from 2003 onwards from the passion of a relationship that suddenly ignites over ten years. It takes you to a middle-class and laid-back life with its owner-occupied homes, the challenges of parenthood and relationships, and finally to the moment when an acquaintance has become a stranger.
There are so few depictions of sexual and gender minorities in fiction that each work builds a picture of how minorities are presented and seen in our common reality. One might ask why the story chosen to be told is in which Saara, a committed lesbian who puts her own work as a writer before family life, falls in love with a straight man, Antti, who conducts research on rainbow families. But in Sarkola’s warm and sensitive direction, the story does not appear as an experience of healing, but opens up more complex perspectives on the life of a female couple painfully slowly towards tolerance in a growing society. The performance emphasises the recognisability of a relationship, even though it opens up special social issues related to the relationship of a female couple, especially through fertility treatments. In addition, it depicts prejudices against parenthood in a plain but at the same time warmly humorous way.
The work builds a picture of how minorities are represented and seen in our common reality.
The shared apartment brings together two different women, the bohemian and boundless Saara and the meticulous economist Elisa. Wenla Reimaluoto and Misa Lommi portray the women realistically, and Lehtola’s supple and snappy dialogue flows naturally. It’s hard not to love Reimaluoto’s angry and at the same time sensitive Saara. Along with Elisa, Saara’s childhood family, which collects lingonberries and makes a fuss, also enters Saara’s life. Against the parents deliciously typed by Unto Nuora and Kaisa Torkkeli , a lot of the lack of acceptance and inability to speak is reflected in the female couple.
In Lehtola’s novel, the perspectives of both women are heard in turn. In the performance, the story is carried by interviews with Antti, a researcher in the humanities, played by Pyry Nikkilä with soft gestures. In them, Saara uses flashbacks to open up about her relationship, the painful process of having a child, and at the same time, without even noticing, herself. The story progresses lightly from one time level and event to another. The dense cuts are supported by K. Rasila’s realistic, everyday, realistic, time- and place-effectively marking set design with rotating stages.
The atmosphere of the performance is light, but not superficial. Laughter of recognition can be heard in the audience. The performance opens up perspectives on the everyday life of minorities to a wide range of viewers. If you are familiar with the life of sexual minorities in the 2000s, then the joke about lesbians dressed in similar plaid shirts hits the mark. On the other hand, the internalized self-loathing and understanding of the experience of being an outsider presented with small gestures can hit the viewers hard.