The strange and beau­ti­ful world of Aki Kaurismäki

My first encounter with the work of Aki Kau­ris­mä­ki was on an awk­ward date. Which, if you’ve seen any of the filmmaker’s work, is very on brand. It was a press screen­ing of his typ­i­cal­ly dole­ful 2006 com­ic fea­ture, Lights in the Dusk, in which a hang­dog night watch­man with no friends hooks up with a gang of crim­i­nals in a bar pure­ly for the com­pa­ny. The film’s grace­ful­ly lethar­gic plot, dead­er-than-dead­pan humour, its stri­dent cri­tique of cap­i­tal­ism and the sud­den bursts of clas­sic rock’n’roll music made me feel like I was in the com­pa­ny of an old hand – some­one more-than-wor­thy of fur­ther explo­ration. I’ll admit, we both were a tad bemused at the fact we were dropped so sud­den­ly into Kaurismäki’s sin­gu­lar world with­out a road map, so for those plan­ning to head out to see his scin­til­lat­ing, award-win­ning new work, Fall­en Leaves, here are some bits and bobs to look out for.

It’s imme­di­ate­ly appar­ent from see­ing his bril­liant new film, Fall­en Leaves, that there’s no-one in the world of cin­e­ma quite like Aki Kau­ris­mä­ki. He’s an arm­chair rebel from Fin­land who tells sto­ries about beau­ti­ful losers, hard-drink­ing mis­cre­ants, and work­ing class heroes not so much striv­ing for wealth and com­fort, but just to do what­ev­er it takes to main­tain the cosy sta­tus quo. For every moment of piquant, fine­ly-judged humour, there’s a cor­re­spond­ing moment of aching tragedy, and life accord­ing to Kau­ris­mä­ki – as so per­fect­ly encap­su­lat­ed in Fall­en Leaves – is a slow mer­ry-go-round gloom and bliss. The sto­ry, about an alco­holic labour­er and an odd-job­bing lon­er try­ing to work out if falling in love would be a wise option in such a com­mer­cial cli­mate, is deliv­ered in clas­sic Kau­ris­mä­ki style, from the per­fect­ly-judged dead­pan per­for­mances, the cre­pus­cu­lar Helsin­ki land­scapes, and the show­case of var­i­ous local bar bands. But to endear you to his won­der­ful world, here are some oth­er styl­is­tic and the­mat­ic touch­points coined over his incred­i­ble, one-of-a-kind oeuvre.

Direc­tor-cin­e­matog­ra­ph­er part­ner­ships don’t come tighter than the one between Aki Kau­ris­mä­ki and Timo Salmi­nen. He has shot every one of the director’s films, start­ing with the 1981’s doc on the Finnish local music scene, The Saimaa Ges­ture. The Salmi­nen touch is both high­ly dis­tinc­tive and hard to define; his com­po­si­tions are sim­ple, unclut­tered, sub­tly expres­sive, and are imbued with the melan­choly lyri­cism of the painter Edward Hop­per. The pow­er of Salminen’s con­tri­bu­tions to the Kau­ris­mä­ki project is empha­sised by the fact that, even when a sto­ry takes place out­side Helsin­ki, maybe in Lon­don or Paris, the for­eign locales still have that same, unmis­tak­able dusky hue.

We may be div­ing in ear­ly on this one, but it can­not be empha­sised enough how much Kau­ris­mä­ki loves the colour teal. Hous­es, offices, bed­rooms, walls, gates all hap­pened to be doused in the blue-green shade that sym­bol­is­es the cold, hard-wear­ing aes­thet­ic of post­war archi­tec­ture. It’s a colour you’d most often see in admin­is­tra­tion build­ings as a prac­ti­cal solu­tion to retain clean­li­ness, but Kau­ris­mä­ki uses it not so much as a mood enhancer, but as an iron­ic mood sup­pres­sant. It also works beau­ti­ful­ly in con­cert with Timo Salminen’s cin­e­matog­ra­phy, espe­cial­ly when you have it as a back­ground con­trast for human faces in the foreground.

The local music scene is a vital part of the Kau­ris­mä­ki ecos­phere, and while the major­i­ty of his films con­tain row­dy live music per­for­mances (often by obscure, age­ing Finnish bar bands in pow­der blue tuxe­dos), he also made three (very fun­ny) fea­tures and numer­ous shorts ded­i­cat­ed to the apoc­ryphal Russ­ian folk-rock out­fit, The Leningrad Cow­boys. One thread that runs through his selec­tion of music acts is the ever-expand­ing influ­ence of Amer­i­cana on tra­di­tion­al musi­cal styles, and 1989’s Leningrad Cow­boys Go Amer­i­ca, sees the band, with their insane pom­padour hair­styles, tour the Amer­i­can South and adapt their playlist to the venue and clientele.

There are a num­ber of reg­u­lars on the typ­i­cal Kau­ris­mä­ki call sheet, but there are two that stand out as his most icon­ic per­form­ers – whose look and act­ing style embody the director’s tragi­com­ic mode. The first is the late, very great Mat­ti Pel­lon­pää, who grad­u­at­ed from small­er roles in ear­ly fea­tures Crime and Pun­ish­ment (1983) and Cala­mari Union (1985) to play the lead in the gor­geous paean to an abra­sive dust­man look­ing for love, Shad­ows in Par­adise (1986). Pel­lon­pää is char­ac­terised by his bushy tash, plump jowls and thin, oily, slicked hair, and he stands as the ide­al avatar for Kaurismäki’s gruffly sen­ti­men­tal world­view. We also have the sad-eyed Kati Out­i­nen, who has a face that instant­ly makes you want to break down and weep. She first appeared as the female lead in Shad­ows in Par­adise, but her great­est role is in the 1990 mas­ter­piece, The Match Fac­to­ry Girl, a Bres­sion­ian dark com­e­dy about a woman who is oppressed and abused so relent­less­ly that – like a match – she final­ly breaks.

It’s often the case that the men in Kau­ris­mä­ki films just can­not stop drink­ing. 1994’s screw­ball road movie Take Care of Your Scarf, Tatiana fea­tures two char­ac­ters who lit­er­al­ly can­not stop drink­ing: one, mini bot­tles of nox­ious clear alco­hol; the oth­er, cof­fee which he brews via a portable device attached to his car. While Kau­ris­mä­ki has a cer­tain fond­ness for the hang­dog wino for whom the acqui­si­tion of booze is cen­tral to exis­tence, he’s also unequiv­o­cal in his belief that, on the major­i­ty of occa­sions, imbib­ing to excess leads us to do regret­table things. Fall­en Leaves is large­ly about one character’s fight against the demon drink and how it might tar­nish his macho cre­do. On the oth­er hand, in 1990’s Lon­don-set I Hired a Con­tract Killer, Jean-Pierre Leaud’s intro­vert­ed office drone acquires a taste for liquor when he pays an assas­sin to kill him and realis­es he wants to live.

There’s a fair amount of cin­emago­ing in the films of Kau­ris­mä­ki, and it’s usu­al­ly the go-to venue for an awk­ward date. The direc­tor will often have fun with the posters and lob­by cards that appear at the cin­e­ma, often for obscure world cin­e­ma clas­sics that are part of his own foun­da­tion­al view­ing. One utter­ly heart­break­ing scene fea­tures in The Match Fac­to­ry Girl, in which Kati Outinen’s char­ac­ter sits alone in a cin­e­ma bawl­ing incon­solably while a Marx broth­ers film plays – one of cinema’s great depic­tions of utter despair. Yet the best cin­e­ma trip sequence can be seen in his new film, Fall­en Leaves, where the prospec­tive cou­ple head on a chem­istry-test­ing date and opt for a tru­ly bizarre choice of film. And once they exit, we’re allowed to eaves­drop on a con­ver­sa­tion between two fel­low patrons and their hilar­i­ous­ly mis­guid­ed assess­ment of what they’ve just seen.

Kaurismäki’s films are lit­tered with cinephile ref­er­ences, whether in the pro­duc­tion design or the dia­logue. But the direc­tor is always look­ing for ways to shoe­horn in the peo­ple he admires for back­ground roles. Samuel Fuller crops up in 1992’s La Vie de bohème as a can­tan­ker­ous Parisian mag­a­zine pub­lish­er, while Louis Malle fea­tures in the same film to pick up the restau­rant bill of a char­ac­ter who’s had his wal­let stolen. The French com­e­dy direc­tor Piette Etaix turns up in 2011’s Le Havre as a doc­tor at the local hos­pi­tal, and there’s also a mov­ing cameo from French mid-cen­tu­ry icon, Serge Regian­ni in I Hired a Con­tract Killer – there are deep cinephile sub­texts to the fact that he saves the bacon of com­pa­tri­ot Jean-Pierre Leaud by allow­ing him to hide out as a fry chef in his greasy spoon café. Kau­ris­mä­ki him­self even cameos as a Chap­lin imper­son­ator in 1994’s Leningrad Cow­boys Meet Moses.

Film­mak­ers often use TV and radio as a quick short­hand for plot expo­si­tion, but Kau­ris­mä­ki uses them to bold­ly anchor his fan­ta­sy-flecked come­dies into the grim­ness of geopo­lit­i­cal real­i­ty. The Oth­er Side of Hope from 2017 is the filmmaker’s response to Finland’s regres­sive response to the ​“migrant cri­sis”, while the radio sup­plies a run­ning com­men­tary on the con­flict in Ukraine in Fall­en Leaves. The films he’s made in the 21^st cen­tu­ry cer­tain­ly skew towards a tra­di­tion of neo­re­al­ism, where ques­tions of social con­scious­ness and the cru­el mech­a­nisms of polit­i­cal pow­er come into play.

In Kaurismäki’s Helsin­ki, every­one has a fin-tailed vin­tage Amer­i­can lux­u­ry auto in their car­port. In 1988’s mov­ing minia­ture crime saga, Ariel, about an unem­ployed mine worker’s search for work and romance, a dis­grun­tled father (feel­ing like the whole world has turned to shit) leaves an ice-white Cadi­lac con­vert­ible to his son before com­mit­ting sui­cide in the restroom of a dive­bar. There’s a real sense that Kau­ris­mä­ki pays a lot of care and atten­tion to the cars in his films: some mem­o­rable ones include the three-wheel Robin Reliant used by the trio of art­sy layabouts in La Vie de bohème; and the black stretch Cadil­lac sold to the Leningrad Cow­boys by none oth­er than a sur­pris­ing­ly loqua­cious Jim Jarmusch.

Aki Kau­ris­mä­ki tends to pre­mier his films at the Cannes Film Fes­ti­val, and that only means one thing: he’s also in con­tention for the cov­et­ed Palm Dog award, giv­en to the best dog per­for­mance in the fes­ti­val. If there were ever a life­time achieve­ment Palm Dog, then Aki would be a shoo-in. Tähti won 2002 for for his per­for­mance as Han­ni­bal in The Man With­out a Past, comes from a long lin­eage of mutt movie stars – her moth­er and grand­moth­er per­formed in ear­li­er Kau­ris­mä­ki films. And he loves dogs so much, he even opened a dog-friend­ly cin­e­ma in the Helsin­ki sub­urb of Karkki­la called Cine-Lai­ka, named after the famous Russ­ian dog that was sent into space, but also the dog who starred in the 2011 film (play­ing him­self!), La Havre.

Fall­en Leaves is released in UK cin­e­mas on 1 Decem­ber Find screen­ings and book tick­ets at mubi​.com/​f​a​l​l​e​n​l​eaves‘