La Gala, tankarunot

Scoops of ice cream sit in glass dishes in front of backdrops that look painted or dyed onto coarse cloth, the weave showing through the colour: a deep red ground, then a huge orange leaf with black veins filling the whole frame, then a blue sky and clouds over a sprayed orange hillside. The camera creeps across the food and the set-ups dissolve rather than cut, so for a beat a second glass dish hangs transparent over the first and the dishes appear to multiply. The backdrops carry all the seasonal weather the poems describe, which means the film never has to leave the table. A woman's voice reads short tanka in Finnish, 'Tämä vapaus. Voin tulla tai mennä.' [This freedom. I can come or go.], and every verse lands on the brand name, so the product arrives as the last word of a poem instead of as a claim. The script logotype is shaded to look three dimensional and holds one corner, the Valiojäätelö banner across the penguin mark holds the other, and it ends close on a scoop with orange berries piled on top.