As part of a compelling trend to document crucial parts of the history of the growth of the LGBT community comes this timely, and rather excellent, biopic on the life and work of one of the most influential and celebrated figures of twentieth century gay culture. Touko Laaksonen (Pekka Strang) was a middle-class Finnish Army Officer who had a great deal of difficulty adjusting back into civilian life after WW2 in a culture where homosexuality was illegal and could exposure could ruin one’s live.
By day he was a successful advertising agency artist in Helsinki, but at night when he wasn’t lurking in a notorious gay cruising areas looking for sexual partners, he was at home developing his own art as a way of venting against all the rampant homophobia in a very conservative Finnish society. He sketched private masturbatory fantasies based on stylized versions of the soldiers, farmers, lumberjacks and leather-clad bikers that he lusted after as they are nothing like the norm of his reality. An abortive attempt to sell some of these works on a trip to Berlin goes horribly wrong, but Laakesonen knows by the reactions of the closeted gay men who have viewed his work, that he is on to something that is quite extraordinary.
He meets and falls in love with a young dancer Veli (Lauri Tilkanen) much to the disdain of his disapproving artist sister Kaija (Jessica Grabowsky) who innocently throws her cap at him too. It is Veli who encourages Laakesonen to develop his work even more delving into the ultra-masculine world of biker and leathermen and their sub culture. However to avoid the drawings being traced back to him and risk trouble with the Authorities, he stops using his real name and just signs them ‘Tom’. It is Bob Mizer the editor of the American magazine Physique Pictorial that ‘Tom’ sends his work too in 1953 who adds the ‘of Finland’ to create his famous nom-de-plume.
This was the era of ‘beefcake’ art and photography in the days before homosexuality was fully decriminalized and gay pornography was legal in the U.S. The Tom of Finland books and artworks fitted perfectly into that niche and encouraged gay men emerging from the shadows to embrace this whole ultra-macho role which no-one had ever publicly identified as a homosexual trait. Whilst his work was still a secret back home in Finland, ‘Tom’ quickly became a major cult figure in the more liberated environs of places like California and N.Y.
The movie by award-winning director Dome Karukoski takes great stride to also show “Tom’s” success sat alongside his own personal life too which particularly this much more compelling viewing. He comes across as a real charming and affable man and they don’t hide the fact that he participated in a sexual liberation that he helped create. However his touching and profound relationship with Vila, the one real love of his life, that ended with his untimely death from cancer is a very definite and unexpected tear-jerking moment.
Karukoski makes no attempt to offer any support to the argument that ‘Tom of Finland’ art was nothing more than masturbatory aides, and it also avoids all obvious mention of the link between Nazism and BDSM which Laakesonen was known to be fascinated with. Instead it focuses on the profound importance of the enormous portfolio of work, which over the course of four decades included some 3500 illustrations, as being a iconic contribution to a burgeoning culture. Naturally when the AIDS pandemic hit and ‘blame’ was being wildly apportioned to anything sexual and uncomfortable to homophobes, Tom of Finland art was pilloried along with so many other things, and luckily it survived and flourished.
Pitch perfect performances from not just Strang and Tilkanen, but in fact the entire cast, and kudos to the DP and Production Designers for re-creating an austere post-war Helsinki and a newly-liberated California in the 1950’s/1960’s so beautifully. This wonderfully uplifting film doesn’t just confirm Laakesonen’s rightful standing in the annals of gay history, it also shows us too we really can make our fantasies comes true.
