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Autumn Ball Movie Review

Autumn Ball (Sugisball) is a 2007 Estonian drama film directed by Veiko Ounpuu. It’s a structurally problematic, but at times effective drama.

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“A pig and two ducks having sex“

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A film about the loneliness, despair and hope of six people who all live in a bleak Soviet-era apartment complex in Tallinn, Estonia. The movie depicts this historical period when Estonia belonged to the Soviet Union, but it rarely deals with the specifics of this time period as it is just set in it without ever exploring it more.

Above all else, the movie explores all these different people trying to connect in some way, especially focusing on the emotional needs of all humans. Naturally, given its subject matter, there are some very sweet moments in this script, particularly the more intimate moments where the characters try to form some deeper connection.

But those are too rare with most of the movie focusing on the less interesting sexual scenes that are very graphic. There are moments when we see all involved fully in the nude, even some full frontal moments as well. I did not find it necessary to focus this heavily on the sexual stuff with the movie, thus, failing to connect as strongly emotionally as it strove to do.

I did find the performances solid, but because we have a high amount of six characters in what is not a very long movie that is also highly slow in pacing, we got very poor character development for everybody involved. Rain Tolk’s Mati is the only truly well developed, at least somewhat memorable presence here with all others being weakly realized.

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Autumn Ball is very well shot with some particularly memorable editing and also great interior design. The movie looks great in sets and all the details in its setting and period piece, but the direction from Veiko Ounpuu is far from terrific. The movie doesn’t flow well, it’s overly slow and thus never all that engaging. We got some fleeting moments of excellence, but most of Sugisball is just okay without ever reaching greatness. The dialogue being too sparse was its main issue in my opinion.