Fall­en Leaves – first-look review

When you see guys with droopy jaws, immac­u­late greased side-part­ings, slight­ly ill-fit­ting leather jack­ets, and a flask of uniden­ti­fied hooch in the breast pock­et, there’s only one place you could be: the won­der­ful world of Aki Kau­ris­mä­ki. The Finnish leg­end returns, his dead­pan instincts enhanced more than undimmed, with a(nother) sweep­ing, Hol­ly­wood-inspired romance set among the dis­en­chant­ed and the des­ti­tute, where the pos­si­bil­i­ty of love becomes the only respite from an ardu­ous day sweep­ing met­al fil­ings from the fac­to­ry floor.

Ansa (Alma Pöyst) is a dili­gent super­mar­ket work­er who is fired for dar­ing to take home items of spoiled food – Kaurismäki’s first of many micro-cri­tiques of a moral­ly cor­rupt employ­er class who treat work­ers like dirt on their heel. Holap­pa (Jus­si Vata­nen) is an affa­ble alco­holic who holds down a job in a scrap yard, and is let go not for the many bot­tles of liquor he has hid­den around the work­space, but when he’s injured as the result of faulty tools.

At an extreme­ly eclec­tic karaōke night in the local bar, these sad-eyed lost souls form a sud­den, inef­fa­ble bond and a wind­ing, often wild jour­ney towards sal­va­tion begins. Ansa is deeply lone­ly, yet uncom­plain­ing when it comes to the chron­ic toil of her life. Holap­pa just can’t stop drink­ing, and knows he has to face up to var­i­ous demons if he’s to win over this pure-heart­ed damsel.

While that may all read like it’s a lit­tle earnest and gener­ic, the tonal and styl­is­tic real­i­ty couldn’t be fur­ther from the truth, as in this case (as with all the director’s work to date) the tale is all in the telling. The Kaurismäki/​Timo Salmi­nen direc­tor-cin­e­matog­ra­ph­er part­ner­ship con­tin­ues to yield gor­geous, dusky, Edward Hop­per-esque fruits, with shots bathed in arch­ing shad­ows, and fig­ures often caught star­ing long­ing­ly off into the mid­dle distance.

Fall­en Leaves, with its title that tips its hat towards the great Japan­ese melo­dra­mas of the 1950s by Ozu, Mizoguchi and Naruse, is pep­pered with clas­si­cal movie ref­er­ences, some as jokes and oth­ers as sin­cere touch­stones. There are numer­ous direct ref­er­ences to Robert Bres­son, one of which might stand as the director’s fun­ni­est and most cat­ty gags about cinephile cul­ture ever. Walls are strewn with clas­sic-era movie posters, as if to remind Ansa and Holap­pa how close they are to these mas­ter­works of escapist roman­tic fantasy.

All the while, the radio inces­sant­ly blares out reports on the con­flict in Ukraine, per­haps act­ing as an extra cat­a­lyst for these char­ac­ters to forge a human con­nec­tion before all is too late. It’s a won­der­ful film with not an ounce of fat on the bone, and Kau­ris­mä­ki still man­aged to thread the nee­dle between a style of iron­ic detach­ment and emo­tions that are big, bold and instant­ly affect­ing. Fall­en Leaves also makes the case for Kau­ris­mä­ki as the all-time mas­ter of poet­ic final shots, and this one sees him announce one of his key sources of inspi­ra­tion. But you’ll have to watch to find out who.