Home Artists Posts Import Register

Content

The unavoidable familiarity of Fallen Leaves, together with its mere 80-minute runtime, initially made me think that this film represented Kaurismäki on autopilot, applying his long-ago perfected style to something utterly slight. After all, the usual elements are all there: rockabilly, leather jackets, a very photogenic dog, and above all a stony, downcast approach to performances, saturating every frame with a sort of wistful glumness. In Aki's world, everyone is down and out, but there is still the possibility of carving out a small bit of happiness, so long as human beings act generously toward one another. 

In some respects Fallen Leaves really is just a straight articulation of that philosophy, and its narrative is so compressed and minimal that for the first thirty minutes or so the film feels very much like a short that has been expanded, barely, to feature length. An alcoholic machinist, Holappa (Jussi Vatanen), meets supermarket worker Ansa (Alma Pöysti) in a bar and they hit it off quickly, due as much to their mutual loneliness as and particular spark. A few awkward pretexts -- a lost phone number, Ansa's playful refusal to give her name -- result in the couple being temporarily kept apart, but then of course fate, and their love for the movies, brings them together again.

Nevertheless, this slender romantic narrative offers Kaurismäki a framework with which to address other matters on his mind. Ansa is "fired" from the grocery  (she's on a zero-hour contract) because she was caught taking home expired food rather than chucking it out. In the mind of corporate capitalism, this is stealing. Meanwhile, Holappa's tool-and-dye job places him in friendly proximity to two Muslim workers, neither of whom have much to do with the story itself. They are just part of the landscape of labor in Helsinki, which seems to be the point. And most notably, every time a character turns on the radio, we hear news reports about the war in Ukraine, specifically about the Russians targeting civilians. 

Given how reductive Fallen Leaves is, these subtexts and refrains take on greater importance. Kaurismäki sees everything going to hell, and seems to pose the very idea of a romance plot as a kind of challenge. How could anyone find happiness in this late-capitalist, neocolonialist world order? And, to paraphrase Rick Blaine, does it amount to a hill of beans whether two underpaid, barely housed losers find each other and make a go of it?

So much recent Kaurismäki has focused primarily on social solidarity. The Man Without a Past, La Havre, and The Other Side of Hope had clearly delineated sides, with low-level bosses and their flunkies upholding power relations almost as a reflex, while the sensitive human beings of the world band together to stop them. Fallen Leaves retains this theme, with the manager and security guard ganging up on Ansa and her fellow workers standing beside her. However, Holappa's situation is a bit different. He loses work not because his bosses are capricious, but because he's caught drinking on the job. 

So Fallen Leaves sets up a different kind of parallel. Ansa works hard but is cheated by the system, and Holappa's situation isn't all that different. But he is sabotaging himself, and eventually Ansa makes it clear she won't date him if he can't stop drinking. Kaurismäki doesn't vilify Holappa at all, and shows him to be a sympathetic character. The unspoken assumption of Fallen Leaves is that live under European capitalism in 2023 is so miserable, drinking is a reasonable response. But so is love, and Hollapa must trust in Ansa in order to forge a better life.

What's more, Kaurismäki intertwines Holappa and Ansa's relationship with the movies. Their first date is a showing of Jarmusch's The Dead Don't Die, which they both find hilarious. Knowing that zombies have long been an allegorical trope for dead-end life and slave labor, their self-recognition makes sense. But aside from the pointedly cinephilic posters in the lobby (LArgent, Contempt, Point Blank), Kaurismäki dabbles in semi-direct quotation: a coffee shop scene staged very much like a Hong Sangsoo film, and a conclusion that strongly resembles Sirk and Naruse. Very little exists that can make this life tolerable, but love and art are still there for us. Maybe they're the exact same thing.


Comments

Anonymous

Maybe I'm just re-stating your review, but I see the film's "glass half full" mood as a sign of utter despair. All attempts to forge community outside capitalism beyond one-on-one relationships have failed. (I think the film alludes to 12-step groups once or twice, but if Holappa attends them, this remains offscreen.) Love and art are far from nothing, but one wonders what will happen down the road to Holappa and Ansa, especially if he relapses.