Tia Kouvo’s debut feature is a tragicomedy about two middle-aged sisters who, with their families, spend Christmas at their parents’ house. The annual tradition gathers the family together, but family time also brings up tensions and conflicts. Especially the father’s alcoholism puts a strain on the family.
Family Time has a specific stylistic feature: the static sequence shot. A few exceptions notwithstanding, the camera remains still, the shot scales are relatively large, and the scenes have been executed with just one shot. Kouvo harnesses this conspicuous style for observing slowly unravelling tensions in the family, on the one hand, and for thematising absence and obmutescence, on the other. Sometimes what is off-screen and unsaid seems to dominate what is said and on-screen.
Family Time is a tragicomedy in the most precise sense of the term. Kouvo derives both comedy and tragedy from the uniqueness of family dynamics, but in Family Time they are never separate tonal elements; they are completely interwoven with one another.
Ilpo Hirvonen