Review: Fallen Leaves (2023)
A masterpiece of deadpan humor amid desperate lives
Fallen Leaves (Kuolleet lehdet, 2023)
Written and directed by Aki Kaurismäki
A few days ago, Cahiers du Cinema announced their top ten films of the year. I already saw and reviewed the awe-inspiring Trenque Lauquen and the riveting Anatomy of a Fall, and last night I saw the other movie in their top three, the Finnish comedy “Fallen Leaves” (Kuolleet lehdet), directed by Aki Kaurismäki.
I’ll be honest, I don’t know a damn thing about this director, whom Wikipedia says is the best-known among Finnish directors. Nor am I familiar with the culture of Finland to a degree that would help me better understand this film’s humor and narrative approach. I did like the film. But I feel I missed a lot. Just being up front about that.
The movie is about two middle-aged, lower-working class Finns living in Helinski. During the course of the film, each loses their job at least once; she begins as a supermarket worker and moves downward to what seems like the lowest position in an industrial plant, and he begins at a different industrial plant and drifts downward into unemployment. Each has a core of defiance of authority within them.
The woman, Ansa (Alma Pöysti), has a small apartment in a shabby courtyard hidden away in one of those districts on the outskirts of a European capital that you see only from a train window. Each day she returns home and turns to her only companion, a radio that spits out news of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. (The news, the weather, and the times of sunset tell the viewer that the film begins in March or April 2022. No one’s wearing COVID masks but the war news is ubiquitous, and would be of particular interest, of course, in a country that borders Russia.) She seems very lonely.
The man, Holappa (Jussi Vatanen) — we never learn his first name — is an alcoholic, keeping a flask of vodka close by and swigging from it throughout the day. This gets him fired twice and is a showstopper, as Americans might say, for Ansa.
He has a friend, a co-worker at his first job, Raunio (Martti Suosalo) with whom he has a hilarious relationship of low-level negging spoken in utterly deadpan dialogue. Even funnier, Rauino has, or pretends to have, an inflated opinion of himself. Toward the beginning of the movie, the two men go to a karaoke bar — by chance, it’s the first time Ansa and Holappa see each other — and Rauino performs a sentimental Finnish song in a bass register; his voice is almost good but the low register is comical, and the moment becomes a running joke for the rest of the movie. Toward the end of the film Ansa and Rauino meet for the first time and recognize each other from that occasion.
Ansa: I saw you at the karaoke.
Rauino: I’m still waiting to hear from a record company. That they haven’t contacted me and offered me a contract yet is unfathomable.
I’m reconstructing from memory of what the subtitles said, so my quotations of dialogue are approximations twice over, but imagine all of the characters speaking throughout the film with flat tones and deadpan expressions and you get the idea of the humor of the movie.
The movie’s plot is the most basic rom-com plot possible: After meeting and having a few tentative encounters, the relationship shipwrecks on an argument composed entirely of two lines of dialogue:
Ansa: I watched my father die from alcoholism, then my brother. My sister drinks too. I won’t have a drunk.
Holappa: And I won’t take orders from anyone. (Walks out the door)
No raised voices; the actors merely raise the intensity of their line readings about 20% from straight deadpan. The muted emotions and telegraphic dialogue, in which only a few words are used to communicate, typify Kaurismäki’s strategy throughout.
I don’t know whether this unemotional tone is typical of Kaurismäki’s work or if he’s satirizing Finns in general. Indiewire in its review points out that the film the two characters go to see on their first date is one by Jim Jarmusch, who’s famous for emotionally remote characters (to put it a nice way). So maybe “Fallen Leaves” is an homage more than it is a satire. Or maybe it’s both.
As I was saying, the romcom plot is the most basic there is. After this initial breakup, and some further challenges, Holappa manages to quit drinking, and by the end of the film the two have reunited. But even before the happy ending, Ansa has stopped waiting for Holappa to be the source of love in her life: she rescues a stray dog from her work site. For me, the most emotionally satisfying moment of the movie was not the reunion of the couple at the end, but the moment that the dog, resting next to Ansa’s sleeping body, finally lets down its defenses and lowers its head to sleep against her leg.1
Visually, one of Kaurismäki’s achievements with the film is a splendid use of color throughout. Against the muted shades of the northern landscape, where even in the summertime we hardly see a flower, Kaurismäki clothes the actors in primary shades, often brilliant ones, as in the scene where Ansa and Holappa eat a meal at her apartment, him in a golden shirt, her in a brilliant red top.
Is this, as Cahiers du Cinema and many reviewers suggest, a brilliant film? I can’t say so. It’s certainly enjoyable, for the deadpan humor if for nothing else. But I wasn’t caught up in the fate of the characters. It seems to me that this means it has to be appreciated for its technical and formal achievements, its direction and performances. These are certainly fine. But I guess I need to be swept up by something, even if it’s not the plot.
“Fallen Leaves” is in theaters, and begins streaming on HBO’s MAX service on Dec. 15. Kaurismäki’s 1980s “Proletariat Trilogy” — “Shadows in Paradise,” “Ariel” and “The Match Factory Girl” — are currently streaming on the Criterion Channel.
This put me in mind of the last scene of “Flashdance,” where the millionaire capitalist stages a reunion with the (previously) independent main character by bringing HER OWN DOG to her with a huge ribbon around its neck, as if he was making a present of it to her. IT’S ALREADY HER OWN FUCKING DOG! This pissed me off when I first saw it and whenever I think about it, it still pisses me off. What an asshole!