Over the years there have been plenty of comedies made about horny high school boys desperate for sex with hot girls, but not so many about horny high school girls desperate for sex with hot guys. Turn Me On, Goddamit, is probably one of the few (and it was made by an actual female, no less!). Alma is a fifteen year old girl living in small town Norway, who really, really wants to have sex. She passes her days masturbating to porno magazines and the sultry voices of phone sex operators, and fantasizes about almost everyone around her. When the object of her desires, Artur, pokes her with his erect penis at a party, she quickly tells everyone about it, only to be shot down and not believed. Naturally, her life becomes an adolescent hell as her friend Ingrid, who also likes Artur, turns her whole high school against her. What is so refreshing about this film is how honest it is in its portrayal of adolescence. Director Jannicke Systad Jacobsen does not fall back on the usual cliches and sentimentality, and her young actors actually look and act like teenagers. It perfectly captures the awkwardness of those painful years, but without overdoing it, or falling into the knowing smarminess that so dominates independent cinema today. Balance is the key word here; the various emotional and thematic elements are carefully held in a perfect balance, keeping the film from spilling over, and it is because of this, that Turn Me On, Goddamit is more easy to relate to than other films exploring the same topic, because it does not spill over. Easily one of the best teenage comedies in recent memory.
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