From left, Linnea Leino and Aamu Milonoff in Girl Picture (Citizen Jane Productions/Strand Releasing)

At 16 or so, Rönkkö frets aloud about her low sex drive. She’s also worried about her lack of romantic feelings for anyone. “Someone our age saying they’ll never find love is the biggest cliché,” scoffs her friend Mimmi. And so it is, but how to find a way around love can be a fascinating subject at any stage of life. In Girl Picture, Finnish director Alli Haapasalo follows three teenage girls over three consecutive Fridays as they fumble through attempts at sex, romance, and life. Her matter-of-fact yet affectionate approach helps make up for the relative familiarity of the experiences.

Volatile Mimmi (Aamu Milonoff) kicks off the film with a fight, flaring up at a rival in a sports game and startling teammates by clobbering her opponent. Driven, dutiful Emma (Linnea Leino) trains for a big skating championship, spending hours tumbling on her backside at the rink attempting a triple Lutz. And Rönkkö (Eleonoora Kauhanen) tests her own sexual mettle with some bizarre encounters. This is the only film where a young girl drives away a potential make-out interest by blurting out that she can’t drink from mugs imprinted with the quintessentially Finnish Moomintroll cartoon character—they remind her of sperm donations (if you find that a trifle eccentric, wait till you see Rönkkö deal with actual sex).

Girl Picture hovers around Rönkkö and Mimmi at a mall smoothie stand where they work, shooting the breeze and flirting with customers. Graceful, airy handheld camera enhances the freewheeling openness of their exchanges. In their first on-screen meeting, Mimmi is shockingly rude to customer Emma, who only wants to order a smoothie with a silly name. Their unpleasant initial contact leads to the kind of haters-turn-lovers consuming affair that happens often in the movies but rarely in real life. The two kick off their romance with teenage orgiastic nightclub dancing, another well-known trope signaling the heedless hedonism of youth (wait, aren’t teenagers doing most of their dancing on TikTok these days?). Caught up in attraction, experimentation, or just life, each teen has her own issues she’ll have to work through and come out the other side.

Some of its ideas are less than fresh, but Girl Picture offers a lot of charm and heart to help viewers settle into and enjoy the movie. The characters are appealing and the young actresses natural and unaffected on camera. Its scenes of lesbian passion look more real and intimate than in films by big-name directors and stars (I’m looking at you, Carol). Throughout, Haapasalo employs an admirable restraint. The movie doesn’t overblow its cringey Booksmart-style of humor, but handles its relatable young characters honestly and with a light touch. A new entry in the coming-of-age category, Girl Picture holds its own and even outstrips some competitors in its own modest way.