Fallen Leaves
Director: Aki Kaurismaki
13 June 2023
See
Him: Ansa (Alma Poysti) and Holappa (Jussi Vatanen) are both lonely and live sad lives in Helsinki. She sorts shelves in a supermarket, taking home out of date food. He’s a metalworker who drinks excessively and can’t bring himself to stop having nothing better to do. They meet cute out with friends at karaoke. But do nothing about the chance encounter, till it happens again and again.
Her: ‘Fallen leaves’, is the most recent film directed by the most prominent Finnish director Aki Kaurismäki, an love story of two people living in Helsinki at the time of the first Russian attacks on Ukraine. They’re not Romeo and Juliette, they’re Ansa and Holappa and they are as imperfect and dull as the cold grey world around them..
Think
Him: Director Aki Kaurismaki sounds like my kind of guy, a sardonic optimist like his characters who life seems to step and and downtrod. His IMDB trivia states that when winning the Grand Prix prize at Cannes for his film Mies Vailla Menneisyytta (The Man Without a Past 2002) he thanked himself, then the judges, then walked off stage. It sounds like an uncontrived version of Matthew McConnaughhey’s ‘I’m my own hero’ Oscar speech for Dallas Buyers Club. When Ansa is dismissed for taking home expired food she handles it with dignity and grace by saying perhaps she’s past her used by date too. When Holappa loses her number he returns to the cinema they went on a date to see The Dead Don’t Die, directed by Jim Jarmusch (A fan of Kaurismaki’s films). He lingers, chain smoking, returning time and again believing that he’ll see her again, or perhaps languishing, not knowing what else to do, and it feels better than doing nothing. These people are down but not out. Where there’s life, there’s hope. They’re on their last legs, but keep stumbling on, towards each other. Or together.
Her: I’d like to think of this film as a nod to the French new wave that Aki is a big fan of. In its best traditions, he pick the most ordinary people that live their small discreet ordinary lives. It would have been hard to track what year this story takes place in if it wasn’t for the radio delivering the latest news about the war between Russia and Ukraine.
Feel
Him: The karaoke scene (there are multiple, one to Schubert’s serenade) where two young and pretty cool girls are performing a synth pop song with despondent lyrics like, “Even the graveyard is bound by fences” seems to be the moment that Holappa and Ansa are able to change their circumstances. Kaurismaki has these fluid tableaux’s of people in sitting silently in pubs, sipping, smoking and serene, that seem so sad and sweet that I wanted to laugh cry. I wanted to shazam the song but was trying to be present and enjoy the moment and the movie, as good a start to Sydney Film Festival as any screening I’ve seen at the State Theatre, and better than most.
Her: Tragicomedy is probably my favourite genre because I feel like it best reflects the reality of life. My life at least. Being Russian I’ve grown up with ‘there’s no good without bad’ motto and it seems like most of Finnish people have the same mentality. Humour as an essential survival tool.
Ansa and Holappa are rarely winning in their lives but finding each other is their first step on the long road to the bright future which they embark on in the last shot.
