Tove

Prior to seeing Tove, I’d been on a major losing streak with WLW movies. And while Tove is not perfect, I’m very grateful for it breaking that streak. Tove reminded me that cinema actually is a valid artistic medium.

Tove is a biopic of Tove Jansson, creator of the popular European comic strip, Moomin. At the start of the film, World War 2 has just ended. Tove is trying to find her artistic voice. Given the global events, art has a tendency to veer serious. Tove, however, lacks passion for such sombre art. Her life changes when she meets the effervescent Vivica. Vivica unlocks Tove’s attraction to women. Beyond that, Vivica has a sense of unusual humour and supports Tove’s more whimsical ideas. From this relationship, Tove begins to focus on what she had initially written off as doodles. She creates the adorable, whimsical universe of Moomin. However, as her professional life begins to soar, her personal life is on the skids. Vivica fears commitment. So, Tove must deal with her lover and muse not wishing to return her passions.

The strongest part of Tove is Tove. I love this character. Far from the tortured artist stereotype, Tove is generally upbeat and kind. She’s depicted as exactly the type of person you’d expect to create something as charming and whimsical as Moomin. She has a real fascination with beauty and humour. It can sometimes be difficult to write a positive character but Tove tackles it well. The dark realities of the world never fully beat this character down. But they do create challenge her generally sunny disposition. Actress Alma Pöysti’s performance really brings this character to life. Her acting allows us entry into Tove’s world view and inner feelings.

The weakest part of the film is the reliance on cliche. While the film avoids the tortured artist stereotype, that’s one of few artist biopic tropes it doesn’t do. This is an extremely standard biography about an artist struggling, being inspired by another character and rising to fame as their personal life crumbles. Cliches can be useful as cinematic shorthand. This is helpful in a film achieving a realistic running time. But Tove relies on cliches too often. It saps the film of a level of depth and certainly, creativity. It’s a shame that this delightful, Amelie-esque character is plunked in the middle of this bog standard narrative. The film would’ve been stronger with a looser narrative. Its rigid structure of biopic cliches does a disservice to its lead character.

The film does outline the recent shift in biopics about queer people. Historically, it’s common to erase the queerness of celebrated figures. Until recently, movie biopics have been heavily complicit in either not telling queer stories or erasing the queer aspect. In perhaps the last decade, there’s finally been a shift. That’s definitely on display in Tove. The film doesn’t just mention that she likes women. The film very clearly states that without lesbian sex, Moomin wouldn’t exist. It’s very exciting to see this change. Movies are always a rewrite of history. I’m very excited to see recent biopics retain or even focus on the queer element in their cinematic retelling of history.

Tove is a remarkably standard biopic on paper. It is elevated by the technical prowess in its realization and a strong lead character and lead performance. Tove celebrates art overall and especially art that offers simple positivist as something powerful and necessary. While I do wish the film had less cliche, I’m beyond thrilled that Tove Jansson gets an overtly queer and charming biopic.

Overall rating: 7.8/10

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