In Turn Me On, Dammit!, there isn’t anything to do in Skoddeheimen, a sleepy little town in Norway where there are more sheep than people. The teenagers are bored, bribe older residents to buy them beer and drink away their days, dreaming of one day leaving Skoddeheimen and making it to more glamorous locales, such as Oslo — and even Texas. They hate the town so much that they routinely flip the bird at the town welcome sign each time the school bus passes it. In a town where nothing changes and nothing happens, the intensity of their raging hormones and high school social jockeying, which wanders into Mean Girls territory and stays there for the duration of the film, is amplified.
Fifteen-year-old Alma (Helene Bergsholm) has been stricken by intense lustful urges that she attempts to quell by repeatedly calling a phone sex operator named Stig, who she occasionally tries to use as her therapist. She daydreams about a classmate, Artur (Matias Myren), and she fantasizes about the two of them in surreal sexual situations. One day Artur approaches her at a house party, and the two have a candid but bizarre sexual encounter, which she immediately relays to her friends Sara (Malin Bjoerhovde) and Ingrid (Beate Stoefring).
Sara and Ingrid do not believe her, and Artur denies that anything ever happened. Ingrid, who also has a crush on Artur, seizes this opportunity to ostracize Alma and spearheads a smear campaign against her. Now a social pariah, Alma retreats into her head even more and begins fantasizing about anyone and everyone, including Ingrid, who continues to bully her.
The tone of the film is sarcastic yet sweet, comical without veering into the absurd, but most of all, the film portrays adolescent female sexuality with an honesty and candor that rarely gets portrayed on screen. Readers of this site in particular may not be so pleased about having to see a 16-year-old’s penis, but all in all, the film is whimsical, engaging and humorous, and fans of teen comedies will be pleased.
Turn Me On, Dammit! opens in New York nbsp;on March 30 and in LA on April 13.
