Critic Reviews

With its soft, bleached images and occasional detours into black-and-white stills, Turn Me On, set in an unspecified recent past, has a gentle oddness as unforced as its performances and as inoffensive as its dialogue.

The way salty-sweet comedy Turn Me On, Dammit! treats the hormone-addled turmoil of its 15-year-old heroine Alma feels something close to revolutionary. I don't want to overburden this mild-mannered 76-minute Norwegian debut, but it's true.

Stuff just happens, some of it funny, some of it uncomfortable, some of it good, some of it bad. Just like real life, which is what makes Turn Me On, Dammit! so weirdly enjoyable.

So deftly does Turn Me On, Dammit! approximate the experience of small-town teenagerhood that occasionally its slowness can frustrate.

What's refreshing about the Danish movie is how direct the girls are.

Throughout, Bergsholm's poker-faced performance creates the effect that we are watching the misadventures of an actual teenager. It may be a slight comedy but Turn Me On, Dammit! is enormously entertaining.

Turn Me On, Dammit! is that rare thing: an honest coming-of-age story from the female perspective.

Alma is at once a charmer and a contrarian, and Bergsholm achieves that balance with seeming effortlessness. At times, she's more than a bit reminiscent of the young Jodie Foster.

This yarn about an innocent-looking but desperately horny teenage girl might not have that much commercial upside, but its bittersweet, faintly depressed brand of Nordic humor is definitely enjoyable.

There's an undeniable sweetness here, evident in the vulnerability that peeks through Alma's disaffected facade, and in the unconventional grand romantic gesture that turns the film's climax into a playfully dirty spin on "Say Anything's" boombox scene.