Therapy

Some activities are intrinsically more cinematic than others. Boxing, for example, with its crunched yet still kinetic space and big lights, is naturally more cinematic than the much less physically dramatic chess. Group therapy is difficult to place on this spectrum of anti-cinematic activities on one hand and inherently cinematic ones on the other. It’s both somehow. The mechanical movement of one person in the group session to the next greatly reduces the potential of both the camera and the edit. It also creates the opportunity for fantastic, emotionally unhindered performances in an enclosed space , much like in theatre. Finnish director Paavo Westerberg’s Therapy comes as close as ever before to winsomely cinematising group therapy.

There are too many therapists in Leena (Pihla Viitala) and Pekka (Tommi Korpela)’s marriage. Ironically, the two relationship therapists struggle to make things work for themselves. After all, the shoemaker’s wife is always worst shod. The problem is they already spent a pretty penny restoring a historic manor in Estonia’s northernmost tip, where the Baltic country almost meets its Nordic neighbour, in order to open a relationship retreat centre and help others work through their issues. The guests are Finnish and most of them need something more than a week-long therapy retreat. One of them, Anna, played by Alma Pöysti (from Aki Kaurismäki’s Fallen Leaves, from 2023), even “brought” her dead husband Timo (Jakob Öhrman) on the couple’s retreat. We see him too and his ghostly presence raises questions that not even two therapists know how to answer.

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