Tonally and thematically, there isn’t much difference between Aki Kaurismäki’s newest film and his previous ones. The production design is still impeccably nondescript, the dialogue strictly utilitarian, the attention to quotidian detail limited to a lower class socioeconomic field. If there is anything distinctive about Fallen Leaves it’s how the director makes all these factors serve a conventional love story so as to make it as pure a love story as possible. The movie offers little in the way of surprise. If anything, its dramatic arc feels etched in granite; but the particulars of the romance on display are depicted with the kind of passion that Kaurismäki has rarely exhibited before. He still locates the humor in all his tableaux because he can’t seem to avoid it, but now there’s an underlying layer of pathos that feels more organic than it did in his more overtly melodramatic films, like The Match Factory Girl. It’s pathos that anyone can identify with.

Much of this sadness is related to work. Holappa (Jussi Vatanen) toils in a metal factory as a sand-blaster, but his drinking on the job eventually gets him fired. Ansa (Alma Pöysti) is first shown as a grocery store employee who herself is fired after she tries to take some merchandise home that has been thrown out because its sell-by date has passed. Through the course of the film, these occupational troubles will plague both characters in their own respective ways—Holappa’s by his own volition, meaning his alcoholism, and Ansa through the basic cruelty and bureaucratic indifference of the capitalist system. Though the use of these themes is as schematic as it always is in Kaurismäki’s films, the focus on character rather than circumstance makes them more emotionally effective. These two principals meet cute in a karaoke bar where they’ve been dragged by respective friends. In Holappa’s case, it’s his work buddy Huotari (Janne Hyytiäinen), who during the visit tries to pick up Ansa’s friend, Liisa (Nuusa Koivu), thus causing our protagonists to notice each other. It’s clear from their awkward glances that interest is sparked, a connection the actors achieve with the sparest of movement. From here, the relationship develops at a pace that, for Kaurismäki at least, could be considered light speed, and so the bumps along the way are even more startling for how monumental they feel when juxtaposed against the backdrop of Helsinki’s drabber environs. In a typical rom-com touch, Holappa loses Ansa’s phone number, and is forced to repeatedly revisit the movie theater where they had their first date (to watch a Jim Jarmusch film, naturally) in hopes she will stop there, too. Later, when they wonder if they should go to the next level, Ansa has misgivings about Holappa’s drinking, which turns out to be much worse than she originally thought, and delivers an ultimatum in a quiet but decisive manner that derails Holappa’s masculine self-possession. The break feels all the more tragic for its utter familiarity.

Though Kaurismäki continues to mine the cliches of romantic drama for the rest of the movie, he never loses sight of what it is about these two people that appeals to the viewer, namely their belief that love can make this unfeeling world tolerable; which isn’t to say that Fallen Leaves is an exercise in wretchedness. Even if Ansa and Holappa are bruised in mind and body, they hold on to a hope that’s affecting in its credibility and good nature. It’s an ending that more than earns its right to the word “happy,” even if it’s typically low-key in the Kaurismäki style. 

In Finnish. Now playing in Tokyo at Kadokawa Cinema Yurakucho (03-6268-0015), Shinjuku Cinema Qualite (03-3352-5645), Euro Space Shibuya (03-3461-0211).

Fallen Leaves home page in Japanese

photo (c) Sputnik Oy 2023