This is a likable documentary about Pertii Kurikka's Name Day, a Finnish punk band whose middle-aged members are all learning disabled, living with autism and Down's syndrome. The film makes a tacit but eloquent case for punk being a great, liberating musical medium, allowing the band to rage satirically against the obstacles a disabled person faces: condescension, discrimination … just everything and anything. There's a refusenik genius in one song's roar of nihilist anger against the pedicurists who cut their toenails. The documentary has no voiceover, and there were times I felt the lack of it. I wanted to hear how the band got together, who manages them, who organises their tours, who sets up their studio recordings. Did the band begin as therapy? And was there a moment at which one shrewd person thought that Pertii Kurikka's Name Day could actually be something big – beginning a promotional process of which this film is a part? Will the band feel the rough capitalist edge of rock'n'roll just as keenly as non-disabled musicians? Perhaps. At any rate, this film opens a window on to their world.
