Directing: B+
Acting: A-
Writing: A-
Cinematography: B-
Editing: B+

Sometimes the English translations of international film titles is a bit unfortunate, because the title Games People Play is definitely misleading. Who makes these decisions, I wonder? The original title, in Finnish, is Seurapeli, and to be fair, direct translations between languages that capture full meaning and nuance can be hard to come by. I know nothing of the Finnish language, but if you plug Seurapeli into Google Translate, it says the translation is Board Game, or Parlor Game. Those options, particularly the second, make more sense than Games People Play, but don’t necessarily fully fit either.

Suffice it to say that this movie isn’t about people who are manipulative or have tricks up their sleeves, as the title might suggest. It’s an ensemble film about a group of friends who have known each other for decades, have long histories of interconnecting emotional baggage, and have met for a weekend on a remote island for a surprise birthday party. It might be more accurate to say the so-called “games” are those people play with themselves, until they either reckon with mistakes made in the past or wake up to the realities of their present.

Really, this is just a highly engaging drama, to a degree about relationships between siblings, but much more so about friendship. After I got past the somewhat excessive use of shaky, handheld camera cinematography, I quit enjoyed it. The proceedings never moves to melodrama or histrionics, but by the end there have been multiple scenes of deep tension or emotional release. I found the film to be good enough that I’m almost mystified as to why it’s not being released theatrically in the Seattle market, but rather is merely available streaming at SIFF.net. Arguably that makes it more accessible, but the irony is that it also likely means fewer people even know about it. Whether it will actually get seen by more people this way than it would in theaters, I have no idea. I just know it’s worth the streaming purchase (granted, I got a discount as a SIFF member, so for me it came to $8.50).

It should be noted, though, that for some reason this movie is being presented as a comedy. Maybe Finnish (and Swedish) people think this is funnier than I realize, but I doubt it. There are three or four chuckles, but it is otherwise a pretty straightforward drama—and a very well executed one at that.

I’m trying to think of any other movie that is quite like it. Countless movies have been made about friendship, of course, but they either tend to be about the deep friendship between only two people, or if it’s about a friend group, it’s typically a group of all or mostly the same gender. Games People Play is a lot more like the typical dramas you see with an ensemble cast about someone’s family—and, in a way, that’s what it actually is: about chosen family. There are some siblings in the mix here, but nobody’s parents are in the mix with this story. And, specifically, this is a very coed ensemble cast, with four women and four men.

And they have entangled romances in their pasts. One couple, a writer and the woman he met at his publishing house, includes a man who once had a relationship with the birthday girl, who is best friends with an older sister to a woman who is having a secret affair with the youngest man in the group. He’s later identified as thirty, so I never quite got why their relationship had to be secret, except I suppose that several characters remark on how much trouble they have thinking of the young man as an adult. The writer is still in love with the birthday girl. The older sister has brought her new movie star boyfriend to the getaway, and is also the longtime subject of unrequited love from yet another friend.

All of this gets revealed, or new subtle consequences unfold, in a very organic way. The performances are solid across the board, making it easy to believe these people as longtime friends, family members, and lovers. A lot of what engaged me with this film was simply nuances of cultural differences: a lip kiss between two women that is clearly platonic; the casual way in which straight men sit in a sauna or swim together totally naked. It’s fascinating to see how these things are just incidental details, never directly tied to any of the bagged shared by this group of people. There’s even a bit of cultural tension between the Fins who make up the bulk of the characters, and the movie star who is actually from Stockholm, in neighboring Sweden. It’s easy to think of Europe as some kind of monolith of whiteness, but evidently there are weird prejudices even between Scandinavian countries. I don’t know why that should be surprising.

A lot of these things are just details. The story, as written by director Jenni Toivoniemi, is progressively compelling, as the subtle complexities of these characters’ shared histories come to light. It’s about as good as any family drama you could ask for.

*Whatever they’re playing it’s not so much a game as each other’s heartstrings.*

Overall: B+