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Review title: Frustrating...
Product review: ...in a bad way. "The River" (or "Joki") takes a painfully familiar formula (ex. Robert Altman's "Short Cuts," as if we needed another), sets it in Finland, and leaves its viewer stranded. The film is structured around a woman who appears to be attempting suicide by drowning her and her baby in a river; the side-stories follow from there. Unfortunately, the "we're-all-connected" theme of the film feels less genuine than even the the most uninspired of the subgenre. The film feels more like a bunch of half-assembled ideas patched together solely because the director didn't know how to conclude (or leave interestingly inconclusive) each story. The sad part is that the film is far from dull; yet your endurance through the entirity may seem futile by the end-credits.
