Honey Baby (2003) is an unusual love story, a retelling of the Greek myth of Orpheus
and Eurydice, made in Finland in English.
Henry Thomas (ET) plays a former singing
star now struggling to make a living in Germany. His agent offers him a
tour of Russia. He at first declines, but when his girlfriend kicks him out,
and his partner sells their bar at a loss, he ends up accepting. To add
insult to injury, he must drive his own car. On the road, he runs into Finnish superstar Irina
Bjorklund, who is playing a mystery woman who has escaped from her wedding - a wedding that Henry
was to have performed for. She steals his car, so he hitches to his
first gig, and when he arrives, his guitar is there, his car is parked outside,
and she has introduced herself as his road manager. When he finishes, he
discovers that she also collected the fee. He finds her in a club, but he is
soon
drugged, and wakes up in her apartment. They eventually agree to travel together, but Henry
doesn't yet know that her jilted would-be husband is a European mob boss, and is
after her. When his sleazy manager cancels his contract and fills his remaining
gigs with an impersonator, Henry decides
that traveling with Irina is as good an occupation as any.
As they fall in love he nicknames her "Honey Baby" because she was raised on
an apiary. They lose the car
and guitar when the bad guys close in, but hop a train, and end up joining a
small circus, where she becomes the snake dancer. After the circus, things go
downhill for a while but, unlike Orpheus and Eurydice, they manage a happy ending.
The similarities to the Greek myth are obvious. Our hero plays a Gibson
electric acoustic, not a lyre, she loses her snake dancing job because she
kissed the snake, making the circus owner's wife jealous rather than being
bitten to death by snakes, and the mob boss (Helmut Berger) doubles for Hades
and Persephone.
This is a good film in English with known performers, and a decent plot - the
best film version I have seen of the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice. It is essentially
a road movie with a classical theme and likable characters, and it stays fresh
and unpredictable from start to finish. Both leads become sympathetic
characters, although they take some time to get there, and the plot kept me
guessing - a good thing in my opinion. The icing on the cake is the travelogue
aspect of the film, which offers a look at Halle/Leipzig, Riga, Kaliningrad, Murmask, St. Petersburg and
Karelia, and presents those locations in a far more intimate way than in most movies.
