Black Ice

Film Info

Finland 2008 | 110 min. Director: Petri Kotwica

There is currently no offer available

Black Ice

Synopsis

BLACK ICE is a suspenseful drama about an unlikely relationship between two women. The story takes place in Helsinki and its surroundings. The main characters, Saara and Tuuli, are irresistible and unpredictable women of equal strength.
Saara is a gynaecologist on the verge of her 40th birthday. She is married to Leo, an architect and a lecturer at the University of Technology. They have postponed having a child of their own. Saara suspects her husband of having an affair.
Tuuli is a 25-year-old architecture student, who also instructs a taekwondo class. Her boyfriend is the lecturer, Leo. Everything would be fine, if only Leo could be man enough to sort things out with the "almost ex-wife."
Saara finds out about Tuuli and starts to follow and investigate her. Saara attends Tuuli's taekwondo class under a false identity. Taking advantage of knowing Tuuli's interests, Saara gradually wins Tuuli's trust. Saara becomes addicted to find out more and more details. Tuuli, unaware of Saara's identity, opens her heart about her relationship with Saara's husband.
Surprisingly enough, Saara seems to enjoy Tuuli's company until Tuuli tells her she might be pregnant with Leo's baby. A journey towards an inevitable disclosure of lies begins. Not wanting to watch over her shoulder for the rest of her life, it is finally Tuuli who has to choose a false identity in order to get close to Saara for one more time...

Cast & Crew

Director

Petri Kotwica
Screenwriter

Petri Kotwica
Director of photography

Harri Räty
Main Cast

Outi Mäenpää (Saara), Ria Kataja (Tuuli), Martti Suosalo (Leo)

Director's comment

My journey on BLACK ICE started six years ago. At that time I got the idea to tell a story of a woman who creates a fake identity to get acquaintance with her husband's mistress. This idea kept haunting me, and the more I thought about it, the more personal but at the same time universal it seemed to me. I wanted to show where a common enough situation can lead us when the chain of lies is not interrupted.
I wanted to write the central characters as complete and believable as possible. Therefore I wrote the story as first-person prose from the point of view of each of the main characters before finishing the actual screenplay. Although the characters do not make the "right" choices in the story, I wanted the audience to be able to identify with each one of them.
In BLACK ICE, trust is violated in increasingly complex levels by all the characters hiding behind lies, fake identities and masks. I hope we have succeeded in having the audience momentarily identify with a character who they have felt hate or prejudice for.