Butler's Cinema Scene

Pekka Strong as Tom of Finland

“TOM OF FINLAND” My rating: B

115 minutes | No MPAA rating

“Tom of Finland” is a film biography of Touko Laaksonen (1920-1991), the Finnish artist whose beefcake drawings of leather-clad macho men are among the most recognizable icons of gay culture.

But as much as it is an artist’s biography, Dome Karukoski’s film is a thumbnail history of the rise of homosexual self-awareness and self-assertion over several decades.

We meet Toko Laaksonen (Pekka Strong) as a soldier in World War II, part of a Finnish anti-aircraft unit charged with shooting down Russian planes.  In fact Laaksonen would be haunted throughout his life by the memory of knifing to death a young Soviet parachutist.

After the war Laaksonen lives with his sister Kaija (Jessica Grabowsky), who helps him land  a job with an advertising agency. In his off hours, though, Laaksonen indulges in a secret (and, given the draconian aspect of Finnish law, wildly illegal) project.

A first-rate craftsman and draftsman, Laaksonen produces drawings of impossibly handsome, heavily-muscled and  fantastically hung hunks. These preening Adonis’s are often clad in leather jackets and ass-less chaps evoking a Marlon Brando/”Wild One” look (although Laaksonen also had a fascination with Nazi regalia, once saying that the Germans “had the best uniforms.”)

Initially these masturbatory fantasies are shown only to close friends, particularly participants in a weekly “poker game” who begin showing up in elaborate cycle regalia inspired by the artwork.

Showing these costumed gents dancing is about the extent of “Tom of Finland’s” sexual adventurousness. The film has no sex scenes, barely a man-on-man kiss. The emphasis is less on personal romance — though Laaksonen has a decades-long relationship with the supportive Veli (Lauri Tilkanen) — than on the slow advance of gay consciousness despite steady persecution.

Strong’s Laaksonen is nothing at all like the men in his drawings. He is tall and thin, with a receding chin, sunken chest, flabby stomach and an indifferent mustache.  He looks more like underground cartoonist R. Crumb (who was surely influenced by Laaksonen’s work) than a Kenneth Anger fantasy.

Pekka Strong, Lauri Tilkanen

The artist achieves a degree of fame/notoriety only after submitting his drawings to an American magazine, Physique Pictorial,  which caters to an overwhelming gay audience by printing photos of bodybuilders. The editor not only uses the drawings, but bestows upon Laaksonen the name that will make him famous: Tom of Finland.

From that point on Tom of Finland is on a steady celebrity trajectory, with magazines, books and gallery exhibitions. But the struggle continues, especially when he is accused of contributing to the AIDS crisis by creating artwork  extolling the one-night stand. (He responds by including in his drawings condoms as yet another bit of fetishistic paraphernalia.)

“Tom of Finland” is, on one hand, the semi-inspiring story of a subculture coming into its own.

As a personal narrative it leaves something to be desired. Strong’s Tom isn’t a terribly interesting fellow. The film makes little effort to analyze his obsession with cartoonish he-men (the figures in Tom’s drawings are ridiculous in the same way as the pneumatic women of Antonio Vargas’ Playboy cartoons) or to examine the drawings’ dual functions as both art and porn.

Nor is the film about the process of making art. We hardly ever see Tom at work on a drawing.

“Tom of Finland” works best as a gay rights saga, about outsiders slowing edging their way toward if not mainstream acceptance, then at least tolerance.

| Robert W. Butler