Ruusujen aika (A Time of Roses) (1969)
IMDb meta-data is a runtime of 1 hour and 25 minutes, rated 6.0 by 244 cinematizens.
Genre: Sy Fy.
DNA: Finland.
Verdict: Ambitious.
Tagline: Vertigo.
It is set in the future of 2011 and anticipates cell phones, the internet, and the pestilential persistence of flared trousers. It features transparent inflated furniture used in one noteworthy scene as a prism.
Fictional Finland 2011 is all glass and steel modern where all social and economic problems have been solved. Everything is state owned and our protagonist is a film maker assigned to make a documentary tracing the evolution of this idyllic state from its origins in the dark days of 1968.
He has a Twiggy assistant with spider eye make up and hot pants who follows/leads him around. With her subtle nudging, protagonist decides to use the life of an individual to narrate the transformation, a particular individual for in visiting an art exhibition, as arranged by Twiggy, he sees a 1968 photomontage of model that captivates him, and just by chance, again arranged by Twiggy, he comes across the photograph of a contemporary woman who is the doppelgänger of the 1968 model, he decides to recruit her to act out the story in mockumentry style.
What the sap doesn’t realise is …. SPOILER ALERT…that the doppelgänger has her own agenda and Twiggy is in on it.
The look-alike is an engineer in a nuclear power plant where the workers are about to strike! With Twiggy’s assistance, this engineer wants to use the documentary to get across their story and demands which are never articulated.
Love confuses everyone and everything and it does not go well for any of them. By the way, the title is explained in the dialogue and it is not the obvious but refers to an idyllic time, a time of roses. No, not under the sign of the rose, sub rosa, I.e., a secret.
The doppelgänger reminds me of Vertigo (1958), and the cinematography of Alphaville in the daylight.
Perhaps because of the poor subtitles, or my inattention, I could not fathom the climax.