Time of Roses

                 Ritva Vepsä                   

Risto Jarva's Time of Roses, from 1969, is a curious Sci/Fi mystery from the Finnish director. The film had a New York release in 1970, but has gone largely unseen in the US since. The folks at Dead Crocodile have rectified this situation by releasing a spiffy looking disc. The film is set in the far off future of 2012 and concerns a documentary filmmaker named Raimo played by Arto Tuominen. Raimo is obsessed with a long deceased model named Saara (Ritva Vepsä) whose life was embroiled by scandal. Raimo is further intrigued when he encounters Saara's doppelgänger, an uninhibited nuclear engineer named Kisse, also played by Ms. Vepsä. Raimo cajoles Kisse into participating in a film about Saara, but, as viewers of Vertigo already know, the past cannot be recaptured and, thus, the film ends tragically.

Time of Roses is as uneven a film as I've seen in some time. The best parts match the sublimity of Alphaville, the cheesy bits reminded me of Logan's Run. The decor and look of the film point not to the future, but to the pop ethos of 1969; plastic furniture and all. The score is third rate, ranging from tepid cocktail jazz to a faux raga for the (fully clothed) orgy sequence. However, some of the intimations of future shock are prescient: including "mood pills", a form of the internet, cryogenics, and totalitarian surveillance. Indeed, there are genuinely moving scenes amidst the mod clutter: especially the deflating last shot and a sequence where a blind companion of Saara's touches the face of her doppelgänger.

Jarva was a politically committed filmmaker who made both documentary and fictional films. He died prematurely in 1977 at the age of 43, after the premiere of his last film The Year of the Hare, in an auto accident. Time of Roses has more than a fair share of political allegory. Kisse's comrades at the nuke plant are planning a wildcat strike and even hijack the state TV station to announce it. This despite the regime's claim that "class boundaries have been abolished." Raimo represents the detached and feckless bourgeoisie who are more interested in slugging down Scotch and practicing free love that in pursuing social justice.