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There’s a element in Aki Kaurismaki’s good new gem of a comedy, “Fallen Leaves,” that I didn’t discover — even after two viewings — till considered one of its stars pointed it out to me. When the heroine goes to work as a dishwasher at a dingy Helsinki bar, there’s a shot of an oversize calendar. The yr is 2024. “That is really, you understand, like a sci-fi movie,” the actor Jussi Vatanen informed me in a video name.
As absurd because it sounds, there’s fact in that assertion. The fastidiously constructed, dry-as-a-bone romantic comedy (in theaters now) technically takes place sooner or later. Nevertheless, for those who didn’t discover the calendar, you would possibly assume it’s a interval piece — one from the Eighties maybe, given the clothes and décor — apart from the truth that the radio is broadcasting studies from the continuing warfare in Ukraine.
It’s all a bit disorienting, nevertheless it’s additionally a part of the magic of the newest from the Finnish grasp. Alma Poysti, the opposite star of the brand new movie, described “Fallen Leaves” as one thing out of a “fairy story,” including, “He in all probability suggests to throw logic out of the window.”
Maybe one cause I’m so taken with “Fallen Leaves” is that it does really feel like an uplifting fairy story regardless of the despair that originally surrounds the characters. It’s a love story with a contented ending — and a cute canine besides — that nonetheless throws collectively two individuals whose loneliness is palpable, who exist in an unforgiving world, the place work and pleasure is commonly scarce. To like “Fallen Leaves” is to undergo the customarily hilarious deadpan rhythms which might be attribute of Kaurismaki’s work but in addition to its unrepentant optimism.
At a second within the launch calendar when seeing a quote-unquote critical movie usually requires wrestling with humanity’s ills, “Fallen Leaves” is a rom-com from an excellent auteur that, in its transient run time, presents a balm for darkish instances. It’s not frivolous, however on the identical time it’s genuinely heartwarming.
Kaurismaki has known as “Fallen Leaves” a misplaced installment of what’s often known as his “Proletariat” trilogy: three movies launched in Finland between 1986 and 1990. Like “Fallen Leaves,” these comparatively quick works are all tales about individuals on the margins.
This newest finds its two solitary protagonists in Ansa (Poysti), who shares the aisles of a coldly lit grocery retailer, and Holappa (Vatanen), who works on a building website and dulls his ache with alcohol. Their eyes first meet, briefly however intensely, at a karaoke bar. He’s been dragged there by a bombastic buddy, regardless that he would favor to be studying comics alone. “I bear in mind within the script it mentioned that the gaze is upsetting Holappa a lot that he must exit for a smoke as a result of he can’t deal with it,” Poysti mentioned, including, “It’s this sort of electrical second.”
Their paths proceed to collide throughout Helsinki — she finds him handed out at a bus station one evening — earlier than they lastly make tentative strikes towards a real introduction. A espresso date turns into an evening-long tour to see a movie. (Cheekily, it’s Jim Jarmusch’s zombie flick “The Lifeless Don’t Die,” a nod from one art-house hero to a different.)
And but the trail to romance will not be straightforward. A number of the obstacles appear to emerge from essentially the most standard rom-com tropes. Holappa instantly loses Ansa’s telephone quantity, as an example, when he reaches into his pocket for a cigarette and the slip of paper blows away. Different impediments are deeper and extra painful. Although she is infatuated with him, Ansa is cautious of Holappa’s dependence on alcohol, and refuses to permit herself to come back second to his habit — she’s been by way of that earlier than along with her father and her brother.
Nonetheless, with out spoiling an excessive amount of, this isn’t a dour exploration of affection misplaced. In actual fact, by the top it’s downright life-affirming. And, sure, sooner or later throughout the saga, Ansa takes in an cute stray canine, performed by Kaurismaki’s actual life pup, Alma. Even when it doesn’t work out between her and Holappa, at the least she’ll have a companion. The canine is a right away consolation, settling in subsequent to Ansa on her twin mattress.
In interviews, Poysti and Vatanen defined how uncommon a Kaurismaki set is. He doesn’t need his actors to rehearse by themselves, and he often does just one take. In the event that they mess up, they get a second go. Solely a catastrophe would immediate a 3rd. Even the pooch would usually hit her mark, Poysti defined: “She’s received instinct.”
It might be tempting to view the frames Kaurismaki creates as nearly too exacting, since he does assemble this world with a painterly high quality. On the karaoke institution, there are beats when it appears as if the bartender and the opposite patrons are frozen whereas the singers carry out. An absent-minded swig of beer breaks the spell. However there’s additionally an power to this precision, particularly when Ansa and Holappa are interacting. You’re feeling the expectant stress between them, this flicker of hope for 2 souls resigned to the concept of being eternally lonely.
It’s reflective of the anxiousness felt by the performers — each Kaurismaki newcomers, kids of the digital age being captured on 35-millimeter movie.
“There’s this kind of sense of nervousness, and you may’t be very ready,” Vatanen mentioned. “So you need to be very current in that second.”
Poysti agreed that there was one thing terrifying in regards to the expertise initially, however that subsided when she realized what Kaurismaki was making. “It’s so treasured and fragile and trustworthy, and as quickly as you repeat it, you need to begin faking it somewhat bit,” she mentioned. “So for those who can keep away from it then you can find one thing very, very trustworthy and uncommon and exquisite, so that you begin to get kicks from it and also you begin to like it.”
And it’s not as if Kaurismaki isn’t playful. For one musical sequence, he recruited the impossibly cool fashionable Finnish duo Maustetytot, whose title interprets to “spice ladies” and who carry out a music with the lyric “I such as you however can’t stand myself.” The jokes elicit chuckles even when the characters barely crack a smile; Poysti mentioned there have been some moments when she had bother not breaking. After a tough patch for Ansa and Holappa, Ansa’s buddy declares that “all males are swine.” Ansa shoots again: “They’re not. Swines are clever and sympathetic.”
That humor within the face of desperation, which in the end results in an ending that’s as tender as any Hollywood rom-com, is why “Fallen Leaves” looks like such a present. Poysti mentioned she believed that Ansa and Holappa have been going to be all proper as they stroll off into the longer term, somewhat battered however collectively.
“I believe,” she mentioned, “all through the movie, there’s a sense that caring for one another is a counter drive for cynicism, and so long as you take care of one another, then you may have strengths and you’ve got some energy in life.”
And that’s timeless — irrespective of the yr on the calendar.
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