15-year-old Alma and her best friend Saralou live in an insufferably boring little town in northern Norway called Skoddeheimen, a place they can’t wait to flee. Alma and Saralou loathe Skoddeheimen so much that every time their school bus passes the sign that names it, they routinely flip it off. While innocent-looking Alma is consumed with her out-of-control hormones and fantasies that range from romantic to the outright strange, the sardonic black-clad Saralou escapes by writing letters to prisoners on Death Row in Texas. When Alma has a gross close encounter with her dream boyfriend Artur–too weird to describe–the result is her becoming so much of a pariah at school that even Saralou can’t be seen with her.
Directed with quirky deadpan humor by Jannicke Systad Jacobsen (who won an award at this year’s Tribeca Film Festival for her screenplay), “Turn Me On, Dammit!” is a compassionate, whimsical, and unusually honest tale of the awkwardness of female sexual awakening, a coming-of-age film that will entertain adolescents and former adolescents alike.