TOVE: Meet the Mind Behind the Moomins

Pretty much everyone on Planet Earth is at least vaguely familiar with the Moomins—you know, those white trolls with the hippopotamus-esque snouts whose adventures have been the subject of children’s books, comic strips, and television series for decades. But how much do you know about the woman from whose wildly imaginative mind these popular creatures first emerged?

Directed by Zaida Bergroth from a script by Eeva Putro (who also has a supporting role), Tove allows the brilliant artist and author behind the Moomins to finally take center stage herself. The film focuses on the decade or so during the 1940s and 1950s in which two events changed the course of Tove Jansson’s life and career forever: her passionate affair with theater director Vivica Bandler and the success of the Moomins at the (temporary) expense of her more “serious” paintings. Thanks to Bergroth’s empathetic direction and a magical lead performance from Alma Pöysti, Jansson’s ongoing struggle to find personal and professional fulfillment pulls you in tightly and refuses to let you go.

Art as Life

The eldest child in an artistic family led by famed sculptor Viktor Jansson (Robert Enckell), Tove Jansson (Pöysti) spends World War II sketching political cartoons and fairy-tale characters from her own imagination as bombs crash overhead. When the war finally ends, Jansson moves into a run-down Helsinki studio where she can focus more seriously on painting, but despite her best efforts to earn acclaim for her work, she continues to toil in her father’s substantial shadow.

A lively member of Finland’s post-war party scene, Jansson meets and falls in love with married socialist philosopher Atos Wirtanen (Shanti Roney) and seems content to openly carry on with him without the possibility of marriage on the horizon. However, her embrace of free love is decidedly loosened after she meets Vivica Bandler (Krista Kosonen), a confident theater director who juggles a number of same-sex affairs with her own heterosexual marriage. For the first time, Jansson has fallen in love with another woman—and, for the first time, she is painfully jealous of her lover’s escapades with others. Their affair is electrifying, but soon it becomes all too clear to Jansson that her all-consuming love for Bandler is not reciprocated.

Amidst her rollercoaster relationships with both Bandler and Wirtanen, Jansson finds success as an artist—but not from her paintings, as she had hoped and expected. Rather, it is her side project, cartoon scribblings she dubbed the Moomins, that bring her fame and fortune. Yet even earning a regular paycheck for the first time in her life, Jansson is still hungry: hungry for her work to appear in prestigious Paris gallery shows alongside that of her peers, and for someone to love her deeply and singularly, without distractions hovering on the periphery.

Life as Art

By zeroing in on one highly formative period in Jansson’s long, eventful life, Tove has far more of an emotional impact than if the filmmakers had attempted to pack her entire 86 years into one feature. While this does mean that certain aspects of her life and career don’t receive a great deal of screen time—her partner of 45 years, Tuulikki Pietilä, appears as a character only briefly towards the end of the film—one is left with a deep understanding of how this tumultuous time in Jansson’s life paved the way for everything that was to follow. It’s particularly delightful to see how the main characters in Jansson’s life at this time inspired various characters in Moominvalley: Wirtanen was the basis for Snufkin, Moomintroll’s best friend, while Bandler and Jansson’s relationship, especially their eccentric way of speaking to each other, inspired the characters Thingumy and Bob.

Tove is apparently the second most expensive film to ever be produced in Finland, and one can see why in every single impeccable frame. The film is beautifully designed; Jansson’s studio is a bohemian wonderland that features part of an ornate gold bed frame jutting out of the wall above her bed, overflowing bookshelves, and her works-in-progress scattered about, while the underground Paris cafes and house parties that she visits with her friends are delightfully dizzying.

The incredibly detailed work of production designer Catharina Nyqvist Ehrnrooth and art directors Tony Alfström, Christer Hongisto, and Juha-Matti Toppinen transports the audience back to an era that was not quite the Roaring Twenties, but similar—an era of relief that the war was finally over and excitement for what the future held. As we prepare to (hopefully) leave the COVID-19 pandemic behind for a similar period of maximally embracing everything that life has to offer, it is easy to be inspired by the freewheeling look and feel of this film.

The cast is strong across the board, including Kosonen as Bandler, who boldly sweeps Jansson off her feet before dropping her with a painful thud, and Roney as Wirtanen, who realizes far too late that Jansson should have always been his priority. But this is Alma Pöysti’s movie from beginning to end. With an elfin beauty that bears a remarkable resemblance to that of the real Jansson, Pöysti brings this unconventional woman to life with all her facets and flaws intact.

It often feels like a character is truly laid bare on screen when they are dancing; this is the case in Tove, in which we see Jansson frantically bouncing around a room to a record after returning to Wirtanen, hoping he can heal the heart that Bandler broke. As she dances, Pöysti’s performance swirls through a sea of complicated emotions: her self-constructed facade of happiness begins to crumble, her movements grow jerkier and her face dissolves into tears. For Jansson, it is a turning point in which she realizes that she can’t turn her relationships with either Wirtnanen or Bandler into something they aren’t; for Pöysti, it is a moment in which her star catches alight.

Conclusion

Just when you thought historical biographical dramas were the most exhausted genre in cinema, along comes Tove to energize and inspire. Hollywood could take some tips from Bergroth, Pöysti, and company on how to bring cultural icons to the big screen without every frame feeling as though it is coated in dust and mildew.

Tove opens in theaters in the U.S. on June 3, 2021. You can find more international release dates here.

What do you think? Are you familiar with the Moomins? Share your thoughts in the comments below.

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