Linnea Skog is a little giddy: a highlight reel of photos shot by Toronto’s Matt Barnes has just come out as part of TIFF’s publicity, and the 13-year-old is sandwiched right between Amy Adams and Joseph Gordon-Levitt.
“It’s weird, I’m not used to seeing myself like that!” she says. “It’s fun, but it’s weird.”
Skog stars in Selma Vilhunen’s Little Wing, a Finnish film about a young girl, Varpu (Skog), whose relationship with her often-unpredictable single mother leads her on a perilous journey to find her father.
Mom Siru (Paula Vesala) works long hours cleaning houses and has failed her driving test three times out of nervousness. She can’t sleep unless she’s in Varpu’s bed.
Just-turned-12 Varpu is left to fend for herself much of the time, hanging out with older kids in the apartment block and roaming the surrounding streets in Helsinki.
“When people ask me ‘how do you describe Varpu?’ I always say that she is brave, because she goes on this adventure in search of her father on her own,” says Skog. “She’s kind of shy, like me, but brave at the same time.”
In looking to fill the part of Varpu, Vilhunen wanted not only a young actor who would inspire and touch the audience, but also “an intelligent child with whom I could find the same wavelength quite naturally.”
Vilhunen and the casting director saw “dozens and dozens” of girls before watching Skog’s tape. Previously Skog had only a few lines in a TV series and a few school plays under her belt, but “she just felt like Varpu.”
“I felt like I could connect with this young lady in a special way, and that feeling just grew stronger and stronger.”
Vilhunen wrote the film as well as directed and says “in some ways I’ve been writing this in my mind for a very long time.” Varpu’s story isn’t strictly speaking autobiographical, though she acknowledges that there are definite elements of her own background that found their way into the story, especially in relation to Varpu’s search for her father: “I lost my father to mental illness when I was a baby, so somehow this journey that Varpu takes is my way of meeting my father through fiction.”
It’ll come as a surprise to many North American viewers that the kinds of social problems present in Little Wing exist in Finland, a country celebrated for its top-ranked education system and social programs. But the unemployment rate is right around 10 per cent (Canada’s is just under eight per cent) and social programs are being cut back further each year, says Vilhunen.
Of course, mean girls are a universal staple, and there are a nasty group of them who torment Varpu at horse camp. Vilhunen puts that down to the stress of making ends meet in everyday life, and the competition that results. “People are put against each other in many ways,” she says, “and children pick up on that.”
Skog learned to ride and to jump horses for the role (“All the girls that I’m now very close friends with helped me”) but the several driving scenes were nerve-wracking: “When people ask me what was your favourite scene everyone says ‘the car crashing’ but no, that was very scary! It wasn’t my favourite thing at all. Every time they were like ‘cut’ I took off my hands from the wheel very quickly.”
So she’s not in a hurry to get her driver’s license. For now, Skog is happy at home with her parents, younger brother and sister, three cats and a rabbit. She’s enjoying the attention but is equally happy when she can “listen to music, just chill and be with my best friends,” just like your typical 13-year-old. And unlike her character Varpu, she promises not to grow up too fast.
