The traditional role of a teenage sex coming of age story tends to be centered around males but Turn Me On, Dammit! changes things up a bit by telling it from a female perspective. Adapted by the novel written by Olaug Nilssen, director Jannicke Systad Jacobsen gives us a dry comedy about a female who has to deal with both her hormones and being a social outcast.

Skoddeheimen, Norway contains mountains, empty roads, stupid sheep, and a 15 year-old girl named Alma (Helene Bergsholm). Like many her age, her hormones are going crazy and she experiences many sexual fantasies. She often daydreams about one person in particular, a boy named Artur (Matias Myren) who is in the same class as her.

Alma and two of her best friends find someone of age to buy them beer for a party that Artur will be attending. While at this party she confuses reality with a fantasy that involves him. She mistakenly tells her friends who ridicule her in disbelief. Soon the whole school finds out and she is labeled as an outcast.

Things at home are about to get uncomfortable for Alma as well when her mother finds out that she has been making calls to a sex hotline. Without question this makes her very embarrassed but she agrees to get a job to help pay for the phone bill costs. As it turns out though, her workplace gives her enough free time to still let her fantasies go wild.

Now her two best friends play the elementary game by only willing talk to her outside of school, so that no one sees them talking to the outcast. To go alone with being shunned by everyone, she receives an unflattering nickname. The only thing she can think of doing is escaping from everyone by leaving the town, which she plans to do.

The clear stand out in a cast comprised full of sexually charaged teenage actors who feel oppressed in their small town is Helene Bergsholm. Although some critics had harsh words about her being more of a model than an actress, I would disagree with that. The young actress had to fulfill a demanding role that required the sexual frustrated character to masturbate to a phone sex line and be ridiculed and shunned by everyone. This is definitely not an easy first role to tackle but she did so gracefully.

Perhaps it was my fault for going into the film expecting it to be a game changer for the genre. But Turn Me On, Dammit! was far more conventional than revolutionary. There was nothing technically wrong that the film did, it just did not achieve a lot of greatness either.

Turn Me On, Dammit! was a fresh take on your conventional teenage sex coming of age story, but it certainly was not a groundbreaking one. The film states that “Life is never easy” and it does a good job of showing growing pains that most go through. While it is an endearing film that shows girls are horny too, a subject that is not often shown, but the sum of it’s parts do not add up to anything extraordinary.

It is not often that you find a female taking the lead in a teenage sex comedy, the role is typically dominated by males, Turn Me On, Dammit! looks to change that. This whimsical film was awarded Best Screenplay at the Tribeca Film Festival and one Best Debut Film at the Rome Film Festival. Will Helene Bergsholm do for teenage females what Michael Cera has done for teenage males?

The quirky comedy is about a 15 year-old girl named Alma (Helene Bergsholm) who is finding her sexual fantasies difficult to control. The coming of age story follows her as she deals with her adolescent lust in the small boring town she lives in. Turn Me On, Dammit! has been called a game changer to the conventional teenage sex comedy.

UPDATE: Read our movie review of Turn Me On, Dammit!

Turn Me On, Dammit! official trailer: