22/05/2023 - CANNES 2023: All it takes is a dog and some sad songs for Aki Kaurismäki to deliver the festival’s biggest crowdpleaser

Leave it to Aki Kaurismäki to make you feel melancholic and sad, almost drunk on all that stale beer, only to realise, at the very end, that the story he has been telling is in fact very uplifting. Not many others can do it, and frankly, maybe they shouldn’t try.

His Cannes competition title Fallen Leaves [+see also:
trailer
film profile] is a gentle take on a tiny little love story – one that the world wouldn’t notice, but it’s life-changing anyway. The pair in question (Tove [+see also:
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interview: Zaida Bergroth
film profile]’s Alma Pöysti and Jussi Vatanen) might not know it yet, or maybe they do, but although the universe is conspiring against them, like in that John Cusack rom-com Serendipity (with phone numbers getting lost and accidents waiting to happen), they just never give up. It’s not that they are naïve; they have already seen it all, and life hasn’t always been kind to them. To see them still try, again and again, is heartbreaking. In the sweetest sense of the word.

Is it Kaurismäki’s best? Probably not. There are moments here that feel empty somehow, or overly artificial, as if it were some epic Kaurismäki-themed party he was filming instead, with half of the Finnish film industry showing up. No, really – a proper drinking game could be structured around this movie, with Compartment No. 6 [+see also:
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interview: Juho Kuosmanen
film profile] director Juho Kuosmanen popping up, both leads from Kaurismäki’s last effort, The Other Side of Hope [+see also:
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Q&A: Aki Kaurismäki
film profile], producers and local festival folk, all delivering their own take on that unique Kaurismäki style, usually while sipping something. But soon, playtime is over, and it does start to feel real again. And when it does, it’s just lovely.

And, again, so sad. This is a world of dead-end jobs and alcoholism, cold nights and loneliness cured by – this being Finland, after all – karaoke and booze. It looks like the 1960s sometimes, with Pöysti’s retro skirts flowing around, but all you can hear on the radio are the updates about the war in Ukraine. It’s as if contemporary reality was trying to invade his little universe, and Kaurismäki gives in at one point. His characters also need to face what’s around them, stop running and adopt a stray dog. That’s how you find happiness, kids.

The Finnish director doesn’t change who he is here, making sure everyone gets what they came for: those one-liners (“Tough guys don’t sing”), people who “are depressed because they drink and who drink because they are depressed”, and references to cinema, stacked up on top of each other. There is a moment when these kind, shy almost-lovers go to see a film and watch Jim Jarmusch’s zombiefest The Dead Don’t Die [+see also:
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Fallen Leaves was produced by Finland’s Sputnik Oy and Bufo Oy, with Germany’s Pandora Filmproduktion also on board. Its international sales are handled by The Match Factory.