The Cuckoo

In the hesitant opening half-hour, chaos on the WWII Finnish front leaves local sniper Veiko set up in SS garb and struggling to unchain himself from a rock, and Russian captain Ivan bombed into oblivion. Thereafter the film unfurls as a droll, upbeat, multi-lingual ménage à trois when both men arrive bedraggled at the isolated farmhouse of young Lapp widow. The joke, resourcefully worked, is that no one speaks anyone else's language. Anni, the long-celibate widow, is happy to accommodate them both, but Ivan sulks around the bright, strapping Veiko in the stubborn belief that he's a German fascist. If the picture doesn't escape cuteness, it's often rather lovely scene by scene, whether in terms of wit or imagery, and the sequence where Anni summons Veiko back from death's pass is lusciously bold.