Salla Tykkä’s practice engages the narrative structures of cinema. Her Cave Trilogy consists of three short films, Lasso, Thriller, and Cave. Created over four years, the trilogy seems to move backward and forward in time, with each piece narrating a fictitious scene from the life of a young woman. Although Tykkä uses a different actress in each film, the complete work suggests that the stories follow the development of one person, examining the transition from puberty to adulthood as well as the psychological relation between the sexes. One of the most striking aspects of Tykkä’s films is their focus on the dynamics of looking, and especially of women looking, which is stressed by the absence of any kind of verbal communication. Instead of language, music operates as a key interpretive element in her work, much like in Just’s work. Weaving image and sound together, she triggers memories and associations in the viewer that go far beyond what is actually depicted. The music in Cave Trilogy is highly recognizable, and, even if we can’t name the exact source, it sounds like something we have heard before. Each of Tykkä’s films mines a different cinematic genre. Thriller draws upon the tradition of the horror film, using the film scores from John Carpenter’s Halloween and Brian De Palma’s Carrie. By referencing cinematic history, Tykkä creates multilayered narratives that strike intense emotional chords, as she taps into contradictory feelings of desiring both independence from, and intimacy with, other people, reproducing precisely the spectator’s predicament.