Turn Me On, Dammit! (2012)

I cannot think of one single thing that I would change about this film. The acting is incomparable, the directing deft, and the writing poignantly brilliant.

A movie that not only functions as a solid scarefest but a razor-sharp satire.

A clunky actioner with a handful of cool moments.

It's simply great fun, a winsome film and an occasionally over-the-top luxury fantasy that never flags.

let me start off by saying that i really enjoyed the movie. it centers around a 15 year old girl who is discovering her sexuality and fantasizes about having sex and experimenting. even though the subject matter is about sex it is done very tastefully and did not feel cheap, sleazy or pervy in any way. the movie revolves around an incident at a party were a boy she has a crush on pokes her in the leg with his penis. he denies it and she gets shunned by her class and becomes a social pariah. the movie seemed fairly short but it really is an example of quality over quantity. If anyone has seen the movie "the Hunt" with mads mikkelsen this movie gave me a very similar feeling. You empathize with Alma and you cant help but relate to the feeling of being "horny" and the madness that ensues when you just have all those built up hormones. Everyone can relate to the "trying to lose your virginity mind-state". Really good movie, i hope that you give it a chance, because i'm glad i did.

This film is definitely quite interesting. It's not appropriate as a family film, but I think the title suggests that. Much of the film carries a sexual context to it, but unlike many films and TV programmes, it's not over-the-top or unnecessary, but fits the plot appropriately.The film manages to take one very strange, small, and extremely socially inappropriate action from one character and make an entire plot out of it. This takes a lot of creativity and I don't think I've seen that done as well as in this film. With just a few words about this film, I usually can convey enough about the entire plot to get someone interested in it.The film also manages to present well the negative feelings some people get when they've lived in a small village for a long time. From the beginning of the film, the characters express a form of hatred for their village, which is definitely a feeling many villagers have.Although I wouldn't say the film is one of the best I've watched, it manages to be mentioned by me a lot as "the weirdest film I've ever seen." It's definitely worth watching, especially if you're interested in something unconventional.

Alma is a fifteen year old girl living in Skoddeheimen, a fictional town in Norway, with her single mom and her best friend close by her side. Alma's biggest battle in her life is different from the battles we see in most young females' lives, especially in film, and it's with her raging hormones. She is beginning to become sexually awakened, and it becomes so consuming and so smothering that she can barely concentrate on anything else besides feeding her sexual desires.And they are explicit. Writer/director Jannicke Systad Jacobsen doesn't turn Turn Me On, Dammit! into a shallow exploration of self-pleasure nor does she make it become so comedic that we laugh at the lead character, Alma (played perfectly by Helene Bergsholm) but more often wince and regard her story as depressing or possibly relatable. Her acts are not small, shoplifting pornographic magazines from the grocery store where she works and charging up a hefty bill from several phone sex lines. The opening scene even shows her in the middle of a masturbating act with the phone lying next to her.The more definitive conflict in the film is the fact that Alma has mistaken an accidental gesture from her crush Artur (Matias Myren) as a sexually flirtatious act, bringing her embarrassment throughout her school. At home, her mother, played wonderfully by Henriette Steenstrup, becomes aware of the steps she takes to pleasure herself, but unable to process the ideas and the resources to help her combat this problem. It becomes so bad that Alma has begun to fantasize not only about being with her crush, but fantasizing about engaging in sex acts with other friends and even her boss. Again, these fantasies are not meant to provide the audience with comedy but poignant realism in the sexual awakening of young teenagers and how sometimes their thoughts are uncontrollable. At times we see the look in young Alma's eyes when she awakens from one of these fantasies and see she is not aroused by sometimes shocked and ashamed.It was wise for Jacobsen to set her sights on a female lead. I've wearied of watching males in American films make choices for their own gain based on lust, greed, and hormones - also solely for comedic purposes. To see Turn Me On, Dammit! focus on the bitter side hormones play in the lives of teenagers in a raw form is intelligent and courageous. Had this been an American film, its subject matter most likely reduced to vast oversimplifications of the topic, the characters undeveloped and shortchanged, the depictions of steps for sexual gratification tasteless and filmed with smug undertones, and the aftertaste unremarkable and void of any truly impacting substance.The film begins immediately, the plot and conflict turn up instantaneously, the characters quickly introduced and developed, and the film clocks in with seventy-one minutes well spent, not wasting a second in its goals to try and humanize the hormonal confusion and uncontrollable sexual tendencies of a young girl's pubescent beginnings. Turn Me On, Dammit! is something of a miracle. American cinema should begin, if not, continue to take notes from foreign cinema.Starring: Helene Bergsholm, Henriette Steenstrup, Malin Bjørhovde, and Matias Myren. Directed by: Jannicke Systad Jacobsen.

The concept of the adolescent sex comedy is not something movie goers haven't seen before, but the Norwegian film Turn Me On, Dammit! does offer a new perspective on a popular, yet critically maligned sub-genre. The film features everything one might expect from a sex comedy. Awkward moments, a few shocks, and several scenes of tenderness, however the thing that sets this film apart from the American Pies, is that the horny teenager in this film is a female.The film focuses on Alma, a 15-year-old girl who lives in the small town of Skoddeheimen, and is in a constant state of fantasy, daydreaming about sleeping with nearly every man she lays eyes on. To suppress her urges, she becomes slightly addicted to calling phone sex lines, although she realizes they are a poor substitute for real human affection. She lives with her mother, who doesn't exactly know how to cope with her daughter's budding sexuality, and has difficulty approaching the subject. Alma is also in love with her neighbor Arthur, but after an incident at a party involving him, she misses her shot and becomes the school's pariah.Adapted from a novel by Olaug Nilssen, and written and directed by Jannicke Systad, the most interesting part of Turn Me On, Dammit! is the simple fact that there's a female lead. Too often in American cinema we only see boys as dorky, sex-obsessed virgins. In our sexually repressed society, it's easy to forget that girls get horny too, and that's exactly what this film explores.While there were certainly some embarrassing and uncomfortable moments in the film, it would be unfair to compare it to the sex comedies of America, because rather than focusing on the outlandish, this film takes a much more grounded approach. The comedy is less gross-out sight gags, and more dialogue-driven and situational.The bleak backdrop of the one-horse town the characters live in is just enough to give the film that Euro-indie feel that we are all becoming accustomed to. Those viewers that grew up in small towns will also appreciate the stagnant feeling the characters all seem to share regarding the town.While the majority of the film was charming, there weren't too many laugh out loud moments. Although some of the jokes may have been lost in translation, overall it was not a very funny movie. That's not to say it wasn't entertaining, just don't expect a laugh riot.The film's climax also left something to be desired. The majority of the film moved at a relatively slow pace, then when Alma hit her lowest point, she inexplicably does a 180 and everything is sunshine and rainbows once again. One could argue this sentiment, but I would have liked to have seen a stronger resolution between Alma and her mother, and be given more inner dialogue from her explaining why she was feeling better about life.Although Norway seems to be cranking out high quality movies left and right these days, most of them are gritty crime stories, so it's refreshing to see a more light-hearted film come our way. Turn Me On, Dammit! is a charming, yet slightly flawed coming of age story that will entertain some, and outrage others (Republicans, I'm looking at you.) Adam FilmPulse.net