Sweetbitter
‘Fallen leaves’ is the year’s most deadpan, cringe-inducing, hopeful rom-com. Yup. It’s Scandinavian.
Fallen Leaves
Director: Aki Kaurismäki • Writer: Aki Kaurismäki
Starring: Alma Pöysti, Jussi Vatanen, Janne Hyytiäinen, Nuppu Koivu
Finland / Germany • 1hr 21mins
Opens Hong Kong April 25 • IIB
Grade: B
Fallen Leaves (Kuolleet lehdet) is an odd duck. It’s a film that won’t be to everyone’s taste, and it’s not beyond the realm of possibility for it to be, shall we say, polarising. It some ways the latest by Aki Kaurismäki, Scandinavia’s premier peddler of absurdist chic and stilted comedy, is the less flashy, more Finnish answer to Yorgos Lanthimos: Fallen Leaves is all awkward pauses and colour blocking, low-key chucking rather than loud guffawing, and muddled happy endings (not those kind, ya gutter dweller) that make you go “Huh.” rather than fist pump. Not that Kaurismäki “romances” inspire fist pumps, but you take my meaning.
Kaurismäki covers a lot of the same ground he did in his earlier cult favourites, Ariel and The Match Factory Girl, but there’s a sweetness to the bitter edge of despair, isolation and economic dead ends this time around – if that’s possible – and something like hope for his two working class lovers. That doesn’t mean there won’t be a murder of misunderstanding after the credits roll, but it at least seems unlikely. Also, Fallen Leaves is 81 fuckin’ minutes long and never feels like the narrative has been shortchanged. Just sayin’.
True love
Fallen Leaves’ starcrossed romance starts with Ansa (Alma Pöysti) toiling away at a Helsinki supermarket chain store, stocking shelves for pennies and sneaking “expired” food into her purse when she can. Holappa (Jussi Vatanen) is a construction labourer sandblasting a building for pennies, and a possible alcoholic who DGAF about slipping a drink on the job. Both get canned for their offences shortly after they meet and kinda sorta notice each other at karaoke one night, dragged to the local pub by their friends Huotari and Liisa (Janne Hyytiäinen and Nuppu Koivu) respectively.
Their awkward romance begins in earnest when they have an uncomfortable coffee together then, in a case of game-recognising-game, see Jim Jarmusch’s The Dead Don’t Die. Their date seems to go well, Ansa gives Holappa her phone number and waits for him to call. But in a series of, erm, absurd events Holappa loses the scrap of paper and has to find Ansa the hard way: By waiting outside the cinema. From there things just fly farther and farther off the rails – in a mellow Kaurismäki way – until Ansa gets a dog and they seem to ride off into the sunset together – even though he still doesn’t know her name. End.
Fallen Leaves’ gentle tone and minimalist dialogue (and brevity) belie the depth of what Kaurismäki is saying about economic disadvantage and cycles of loneliness it can cultivate, and how hard it can be to break to of those cycles no matter how much you may want to. Ansa walks a fine line between diving in with Holappa right away and sticking to her guns about excessive drinking. She doesn’t like it, he won’t be told to stop, and the two come to an impasse despite craving a connection. When Holappa doesn’t call right away, you can see Ansa forcing herself into resignation. Similarly Holappa probably feels like he’s being punished for thinking he could make wholesale changes in his existence. All this unfolds theatrically, in carefully colour coded sterile spaces that take their sweet time coming back to life.
On top of all this, Kaurismäki finds a way to hit all the expected rom-com beats (albeit a droll, dry AF rom-com), just one for Helsinki’s most marginalised. Ansa and Holappa are clumsy and imperfect, but it’s hard not to like them, or at least empathise with them, and root for these crazy kids, struggling to meet and makes ends meet in a broken system. Does the upbeat closing shot mean Kaurismäki has gone soft in his old age? Considering the constant reminders on the radio (these people listen to radio!) that Putin and his goons are literally on Finland’s doorstep, and subtle jabs at corporate policies that make giving food to the poor a fireable lapse…No. But maybe he’s just old enough to do both. — DEK