One Foot Under 2009

Visa Vuorio, a 35-year-old team leader at the Helsinki city gardening department, is suffering from a terminal neurological disease and has only a few months to live. Because of this, he joins a therapeutical support group for people with terminal illnesses. His life takes a dramatic turn when a young female reporter, Hanna Manninen, arrives at the group offering to write a series of articles about his life.

During a routine consultation, Visa learns there was a mix-up of samples and that, in fact, he is perfectly healthy. He chooses not to share this news with either Hanna or his girlfriend, Riia, because he wants to spare them the shock and also not lose the chance to have his life story chronicled. He only confides in his best friend, Harri, who, unbeknownst to him, is secretly in love with Riia.

Visa and Hanna travel to Copenhagen together, and there they fall in love, though neither dares to admit it to the other. Back in Helsinki, the support group throws a grand party, and Visa is invited to speak. On stage, he reveals that he is perfectly healthy and finally confesses his love for Hanna. Hanna, overwhelmed, turns him down. Hanna’s ex-boyfriend Ilkka then pursues a renewed relationship with her, proposing in a restaurant in Porvoo. Desperate to thwart this, Visa makes a dramatic move, only to realize at the restaurant door that he is sick after all and collapses on the street.

He is taken to a hospital in Helsinki, but seizes the first chance to escape and crashes Hanna’s and Ilkka’s wedding in order to reveal his illness once more and to declare his love for Hanna. He shares a kiss with Hanna, and almost immediately afterward, collapses and dies on the ground.