Reflective Encounters

“There was a time, astonishingly, where portraying corporate Wall Street guys as bloodthirsty, conscience-free murderers seemed chic. Santtu Salminen understands this sentiment and with his absurdist Primal Therapy breathes new life into a tired trope. An important distinguishing factor here is the age of his protagonist, Jussi, a man past middle age seemingly at the end of the road careerwise. Years of grinding projects as “Jussi the Jock” has left him with a divorced wife, a rude child and plenty of processed food to eat. He’s practically staring down his obsolescence when the young, fit and certainly more productive Aleksi picks him up in his swanky Porsche for a corporate retreat of sorts. 

The key to returning to Jussi’s prime, it appears, is to go primal, to let go of all sense of good taste, starting with your clothes and finally your morals. The pleasures of Salminen’s film stems not just from seeing naked men wrestle in an uber-masculine yet distinctly homoerotic manner, but in viewing the warped psyche of the modern capitalist. It’s a sort of body horror of the mind, where years of repression and frustration from a lack of financial success exhibit themselves in a fundamental rewiring of the brain, creating an animalistic urge to dominate, and of course, kill.”

— Matthew Chan