A Man’s Job

A MAN'S JOB is the bleak tale of one man's effort to support his family by any means possible. Juha is a devoted father of three, a strapping factory worker whose exhausted wife, Katja, is on anti-depressants. He can't bear to tell her he's lost his job, so he hangs around in a caf̩ for months plotting a course of action with his friend, Olli, a nervous-looking cabdriver who maintains the fiction that he's stopped drinking. With his resources dried up and no employment in sight, Juha decides to take on work as a handyman. The first wealthy client he visits, places him under contract, but it's clear she's after something other than home repairs. Following that experience, Juha and Olli start a lucrative business, whereby Olli procures lady customers and Juha services them. Business is so good that he has no time for his young children and his needy wife. Although the job provides easy money at first, it becomes harder and harder for Juha to deal with his clients' emotional pain and his own deception. Soon he is disgusted at the depths to which he has sunk, and it's clear something has to give. (In Finnish with English subtitles) РBB