Director: Aki Kaurismäki
Stars: Alma Pöysti, Jussi Vatanen, Martti Suosalo
Either by accident, bad time management or thanks to lacklustre distribution Aki Kaurismäki films have always managed to pass me by and I’ve only really caught up on a handful of his works thanks to an online MUBI retrospective a year or two back, admiring but never before wholly loving his deadpan take on the Finnish welfare state. It makes a sort of appreciable sense, then, that I’ve finally seen one of his features where it belongs, on the big screen, and thanks to MUBI’s own more robust distribution.
Whether it was seeing one scaled as intended or simply the feature in question, something ineffably clicked. Fallen Leaves is a wry joy. An anti-romantic romcom lost in time, and a fittingly wintry mood for those inclined to go and seek it.
Not much has changed in Kaurismäki’s cosily depressing worldview since his last feature – 2017’s The Other Side of Hope – save for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. His presentation of working class Finland is still carefully curated, represented via the snug interiors of work places, pubs and modest homesteads. Posters and calendars place us in a contemporary milieu, but little else does. Though we might glimpse decidedly modern, urban landscapes on the far horizon, his world is sea green and analogue, a place of Nokia mobile phones and FM radio, where people still have and use telephone directories.
Meet Ansa (Alma Pöysti) and Holappa (Jussi Vatanen), two menial, typically on-the-spectrum characters eking out modest existences within the anonymity of an overlooked populous, both quietly staving off poverty. Both lose their jobs; Ansa thanks to an officious security guard at a supermarket who reports her for pocketing goods that have passed their sell-by date, Holappa thanks to his habit of drinking on the job while working as a sandblaster. Rife alcoholism litters the peripheries of Fallen Leaves. Witness two teens picking out spirits at a corner shop, or the litany of tragedies that Ansa recounts happening to her immediate family, all thanks to alcohol. Kaurismäki understands liquor’s intrinsic connection to working class life. It’s ubiquity and importance, and makes it a fulcrum in the faltering relationship between his two leads.
Over 90 minutes their story is revealed at a good humoured crawl. Fallen Leaves is pleasingly casual, happy to dally for a time at a karaoke bar, or to take in a trip to the pictures to see a Jim Jarmusch joint. The world is lightly but warmly rounded out by a handful of quirky supporting players, the most memorable of whom is Holappa’s sometime workmate Raunio (Martti Suosalo). Their interplay lightly mocks and subverts the macho posturing that exists in such worlds. Raunio suggests at one point that they talk about football, leading to a comedically steely silence. Later, the sport is put to further use, mentioned in the hopes of drawing someone out of a coma. Of course it causes the heart monitor to flutter.
Ansa and Holappa are both comically boring people. Ansa sits sadly in her home, microwaving ready meals only to throw them away untouched, listening on the radio to the latest casualty reports. Holappa displays little personality beyond his troublesome dependency on vodka. Yet the two see something in one another, hopefully something beyond mere desperation. There’s an unspoken solace. The lengths that Holappa goes to in order to find Ansa after losing her telephone number speak volumes of his dedication, while Kaurismäki has justifiable faith in Pöysti’s ability to convey so much with little more than a wink or a half-smile. Everything is downplayed, making the smallest of observations both funny and important.
As regular viewers have no doubt come to expect, its all beautifully framed, exquisitely lit. Kaurismäki favours a kind of crepuscular warmth and sees beauty in Formica tables or the coils of cigarette smoke. Like fellow auteurs Roy Andersson or Wes Anderson, his eye is immediately recognisable, ordered and iconic, and Fallen Leaves is as judiciously handsome as anything he’s put his name on. The modest reach of his story makes it intimate and captivating. A little pocket of hope and reassurance in a world of zero hour contracts, rapid urbanisation and peripheral war crimes. I’m calling now for a full in-cinema retrospective. See Fallen Leaves and join me as I crow, belatedly, for more.
The Lost Highway Hotel 