Jörn Donner's adaptation of Märta Tikkanen's feminist classic Män kan inte våldtas might not be a masterpiece, but it is all right. My biggest disappointment with it is its focus. Yes, there are some important feminist points here (which I remember from the book) that Donner's film has not left out, but except those few moments, this is less a political tract than a thriller. It's about Eva, a librarian, who goes out to celebrate with her colleague. At the restaurant, they meet a man. The man invites her to his apartment. He rapes her. The rest of the film is about the revenge she plans to take on his action. What is so disappointing about the film is that the essential question of the book, "can men be raped?" gets very little space in Donner's take on the story. Instead, we see Eva stalking the man who raped her. She puts on a wig and tries to obtain details about his life.
Some of these scenes are successful in conveying what Eva goes through. There is one scene in particular that I liked. She has visited an ex, a lawyer, and stolen his gun. Eva goes to a garbage heap to practice with the gun. We see Eva's face and birds restlessly circling over the garbage heap. The quietness of the early morning is disturbed by the sharp sounds of the shooting. A garbage truck arrives at the place and in a long shot we see an endless string of garbage being poured out over the heap. It's a beautiful scene.
As I said, this is not a completely uninteresting film. I could help but notice that some parts of the dialogue seem pretty archaic ("do women have to become men in order to create a career for themselves?"), while others are highly relevant today (certain images of male and female sexuality that are still used as arguments in debates about rape).
One peculiar aspect of this, and other Donner films, is that both Finnish-Swedish and Swedish actors are used.
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