Kulinaari

The title card is an idiom, "PAINU NIIN PITKÄLLE KUIN PIPPURI KASVAA…" (roughly "clear off as far as pepper grows"), and the film takes it literally. A man in shirtsleeves, tie and braces is put out of a small yellow wooden house with his belongings in a sack, live action that then gives way to painted flats and models in heightened poster colour. The joke is built into the scenery: a spice jar stands in a field of orange tulips with windmill sails bolted to its lid, turning beside a green steam train, and later a jar of Kulinaari curry rises out of a pool as the dome of the Taj Mahal, with cypresses, birds and a magenta sunset reflected beneath it. Elsewhere the packs are stacked into architecture, a chilli jar and a paprika sachet standing in front of a wall of jars built up like masonry. The pack shot is therefore the landscape all along, and the closing frame only has to gather the range on a shelf under the red Paulig name and the line "Tee unohtumaton maustematka" ("Take a spice journey you won't forget").