The Criminal Always Returns to the Scene of the Crime
– about Films by Elena Näsänen

“I am interested in how the moving image and the sound track create a story.”

Elena Näsänen developed an interest in film narration already during her studies at the Helsinki Academy of Fine Arts. For her final exhibition she made a short film Journey (1995–96) filmed on tram 3T route in Helsinki during one year’s time. Näsänen followed a carefully made plan which included filming every tenth day during different times of the day. The journey between each stop was shot twice, and one was chosen for the artwork. The number of shots, and the amount of film to be used were carefully decided in advance. Following the plan meticulously allowed chance to play a part, which affected what was recorded on film during each shooting.

The film views the city through the rear window of the tram. Times of year, lighting, and weather conditions all change. The tram stops are cut off; the movement continues endlessly. The sound track is filled with the clattering of the tram. Numerous recurring loops are an essential part of the artwork: the loop-like route of the tram and the changing seasons as well as the rhytm of night changing into day.
This early work shows development of Elena Näsänen’s short film production. Some elements of the later production can be recognized already here, even if she is now more interested in fiction. She wants to tell stories and examines the narrativity.

The short film Before Rain (1998) was written in Finland, but it was shot in London. Instead of telling a single story this small budget black-and-white film tells several stories. The structure of Näsänen’s manuscript is conceptual: as her material she took scenes from film classics where nothing really happened. All important action and main scenes were left out. What remained was something that had just taken place, or something with a sense of expectation, suspense. She used, as a source, scenes from Hollywood’s Golden Age films: The Maltese Falcon by John Huston (1941, with Humphrey Bogart and Mary Astor) and The Man Who Knew Too Much by Alfred Hitchcock (1956, with Doris Day and James Stewart). Näsänen rewrote the scenes without dialogue and shot the film in a way that each character appears only once, leaving the connection between persons vague.

The result is a film about young people in a city in ten short scenes in Film Noir style. The film is pressed to achieve a stark contrast emphasizing the gloomy atmosphere characteristic for the genre. The dramatic background music is by the world famous composer Bernard Herrmann. The mundane scenes are familiar to us from any feature film: a man ringing a doorbell and waiting, a phone ringing, a woman climbing the stairs. Nothing much happens, but evidently something is about to take place, or it already did and the following scene has already started. In her film Näsänen offers elements we are familiar with, but there is no narration in its traditional sense, no story to follow. Just short snippets of unrelated tales that the mind links together. It is the atmosphere of the scenes that is significant.

Näsänen’s next film, Park (2000) shows an empty park at dusk. The last of the sunbeams are filtered through the leaves. There are no people in sight, the park is quiet. There is no-one enjoying the peacefulness in the verdant park, sitting on the white benches. Yet a moment ago there must have been a child playing here who left the ball behind, on the gravel path. What happened? Why is the park empty? Where are all the people? Was there an accident ?

The film does not give any answers to my questions but leaves the story open in an unreal world, somewhere between dream and memory. The images and the sound track create a tense feeling of threat. The strange feeling is emphasized when I suddenly make an observation: how can I be here in the park? I am the viewer, an observer watching the situation on film, but at the same time I feel I am there in the park, wondering what happened. I have somehow become a part of the plot and feel like a criminal returning to the scene of the crime. This is the role that Elena Näsänen gives to the viewer of her films: an observer who is sucked into the story.

Elements of psychological thriller are developed further in the film and video installation Photograph of the Sea (2002). Here Näsänen’s narration is even more open-ended than in the previous productions. No characters are to be seen, and there is no dialogue. Instead, the narrative proceeds through sounds caused by the action of the characters and through images showing the milieu or a landscape. Also the plot and causal relationships of the story remain unclear. The two-channel projection of the installation version emphasizes these features effectively.

Projection on the left shows details of a home in a single take. On the floor we see photographs and some crumpled sheets of paper. The sound of typing on a computer is heard; footsteps of a woman walking across the room, tap water running, a glass knocking on the table. Suddenly we hear the front door being opened, and the heavy steps of a man. He stops and something violent takes place: we hear falling objects, thumping or thrashing, but continue not to see any action. The camera stops at the curtains swaying in the wind.

The action moves to the other side of the two-channel projection, where the camera follows the view of a woman running on an empty beach: it is the runner’s point of view, you can hear the heavy breathing. An occasional glance backwards reveals there is no-one in sight. Is she running away from something? Who is she expecting to be following her? There are seagulls shrieking, waves hitting the shore. She stops to look at the sea. A splash is heard. Was something thrown into the water? The camera stays focused on the waves when there is a sound of footsteps getting more and more distant, someone leaving. The action then returns to the image on the left where the loop starts again. The projection on the right stays in an overview of the beach and the sky.

Photograph of the Sea contains elements of a thriller: dramatic action, fear, escape, possibly evidence of a crime. But no crime is solved. Näsänen deconstructs the story by ripping it into pieces, extracting elements, and re-combining the remaining elements in a fresh way. As before, the viewer gets involved in the action of the story while at the same time observing the situation – and trying desperately to solve the riddle.

The following short film Drive (2003) makes a reference to another genre of mainstream cinema, the road movie. The main character of Näsänen’s film is a young woman, which is rare in road movies tending to be a part of men’s world – with few exceptions like Thelma & Louise by Ridley Scott. The manly world of cars interests Näsänen and in her film the woman seems to be enjoying the driving and the speed. But instead of romantic car dreams there is a good amount of threat and suspense in the air, just like in Näsänen’s earlier films.

A hypnotic journey starts from a service station. A woman is driving fast along narrow, snowy roads with a perfect control of the roaring automobile. The visibility on the road is not good, but she drives faster and faster. Suddenly the image is blurred, and the rhythm of the windscreen wipers slows down transferring us into a new reality. We hear loud sounds of colliding cars, breaking glass, blaring sirens, like in an action movie, but without any action to see. The woman continues to drive and her expressionless face does not react to the sounds; there is no way of knowing what goes on in her mind. She turns the car in a crossing, and another sudden change takes place. We see a close-up of the snowy road surface gliding in front of our eyes, becoming almost abstract. A death-like atmosphere is created by the powerful low key electronic music by Pekka Sassi. After this “abstract film” inside the film the woman drives back to the service station. The journey ends where it started, the circle closes … until it all starts again.

Kirsi Väkiparta

Translation Kirsi Väkiparta and Sari Monni
Sources: An interview with Elena Näsänen on May 2, 2004 and the archives of AV-arkki – the Distribution Centre for Finnish Media Art.