In Dan Harmon’s cult TV classic Community, cinephile Abed Nadir is obsessed with lending every proceeding a metatextual twist. Eventually, after one too many obscure film references and being directed at imaginary cameras, his friend Jeff Winger loses patience. “Stop being meta,” he snaps. “Stop taking everything we do and shoving it up its own ass.”

There’s no way of knowing if the makers of the Finnish matryoshka doll of a film Fucking with Nobody have ever seen Community, but they may well have benefited from Jeff’s advice. A film about making a film (about making a film?), the narrative follows two filmmakers, Hannaleena Hauru (also Fucking with Nobody’s writer/director) and Lasse Poser (co-writer) as they attempt to navigate their fraught relationship by shooting a film about a couple in a fake social media relationship.

There is of course nothing wrong with a bold narrative structure and, to begin with, Fucking with Nobody feels incredibly fresh. The behind-the-scenes construction of the fake relationship delightfully savages our society’s continued obsession with heteronormative coupledom, and the chemistry between Hauru and her team has a charming Dolan-esque familiarity.

Yet as the film continues and the narratives tangle together (by way of some truly uncomfortable non-consensual sex acts), it becomes impossible not only to connect to the characters, but to glean any ultimate argument, purpose, or direction. The tantalising political threads the film introduces are soon abandoned for something more (too) abstract.

Hauru argues that this blurred autofictive format was the only way she could approximate a portrait of modern relationships, and in this much she is correct: Fucking with Nobody is, if nothing else, an impressionistic reflection of the psychedelic mess of intimacy. Yet, lost in its own labyrinth, it fails to come to any proper conclusion. Less, in this case, may have been more.

RATING: 2/5

INFORMATION

CAST: Hannaleena Hauru, Lasse Poser, Samuel Kujala, Pietu Wikström, Sara Melleri

DIRECTOR: Hannaleena Hauru

WRITERS: Hannaleena Hauru, Lasse Poser

SYNOPSIS: Filmmaker Hanna teams up with her friends to create a social media satire of romantic relationships, while navigating her feelings towards a fellow filmmaker