LA VIE DE BOHEME - #693

There is a mutual appreciation society between New York indie icon Jim Jarmusch and quirky Finnish filmmaker Aki Kaurismäki, and that spiritual and creative connection has never been more evident in any of the Kaurismäki films I have seen than it is in his 1992 effort La vie de bohème (The Bohemian Life). Like the early works of his Aki's New York compatriot, it's a lazy comedy drawn in warm tones, inhabited by genial losers, and depicting a pocket of society just around the corner from the norm. Based on work by writer Henri Murger that also served as the inspiration for La Bohème (and thus all the iterations that followed), La vie de bohème also owes a little something to the tradition of similarly minded efforts featuring ex-pat artists and writers and the bungled romances that plague them, such as Ernst Lubitsch's A Design for Living [review] or even Stanley Donen and Gene Kelly's An American in Paris [review].

La vie de bohème is quintessentially Kaurismäki, however, and unmistakably European. The trio at the heart of the film are Marcel (André Wilms), a struggling playwright; Schaunard (Kari Väänänen), a loutish musician; and Rodolfo (Matti Pellonpää), a refugee from the Soviet bloc making his way in Paris as a painter. Marcel is being evicted from his apartment, and Schaunard is moving into it, and after a night of drinking where the writer shares a glass or two (or five) with Rodolfo, the three become fast friends. Kaurismäki's script details their various schemes to stay afloat, including Marcel's taking over a burgeoning fashion magazine (his publisher is played by Samuel Fuller, a mentor to Jarmsuch, as well) and Rodolfo bilking a naïve art collector (Jean-Pierre Léaud, who is a dynamo in both of his scenes). In the midst of this, Rodolfo has a romance with another immigrant, Mimi (Evelyne Didi), gets deported, and then comes back. He is, arguably, the driving force of the narrative. If nothing else, he serves as some kind of conscience, the guy that, were he to do better, could change everyone's fates. In particular, he holds to some stringent ideals that adversely affect Mimi. His old-fashioned views on the relationship between men and women are as impractical as his chosen lifestyle. It's up to Mimi, as well as Marcel's girlfriend/secretary Musette (Christine Murillo), to provide the voice of reason, worrying about such pesky things as food, rent, and delivering on promises.

Kaurismäki has a good time with the classic story, infusing it with his own kooky sense of humor while also having fun with the conventions of nineteenth-century dramatic novels. Naming Rodfolfo's dog after Baudelaire will give you some indication of the reverence (or lack thereof) the auteur holds for classic authors. La vie de bohème goes from silly to melodramatic parody before finally settling into a fairly dark finale. The artists of the piece have spent the movie trying to dodge all responsibility, including the results of their own actions (or inaction). Inevitably, this is an unsustainable practice, and Rodolfo is forced to face his own selfishness when his bad habits lead to him being very much alone.

The cast of La vie de bohème is populated with Kaurismäki regulars, all of whom click well together and have little problem balancing the absurdity of most of the script with its all-important moments of realness. Pellonpää plays a similar straight-man role to his one as the manager in the Leningrad Cowboys movies [review], while Wilms' trademark earnestness, seen most recently in Kaurismäki's Le Havre, makes him a rather delightful con man. His scene where he escapes from a thug by distracting a cop with a quickly improvised story is something straight out of a 1930s comedy. One gets the sense that Marcel's writing is likewise a feint, or at the very least relatable only to himself. We are spared hearing any of his prose. When it comes to the boys' art, Kaurismäki reserves his savage humor for Schaunard, who plays a song that is a weird hybrid of John Cage and German noise and industrial. It unsurprisingly sends both Mimi and Musette running out of the room.

Fans of early 1990s indie cinema will appreciate La vie de bohème's casual pacing. The movie is in no real hurry and is as content as its characters with letting the rest of the world move on as it stays settled. Timo Salminen, who is Kaurismäki's go-to director of photography, shoots the movie in black-and-white, and will inevitably draw comparisons to similar work by Tom DiCillo (Stranger than Paradise [review]) and Robby Müller (Down by Law). There is a clean look to everything, however, that separates it from its grainier cousins. For all the squalor the layabout artists indulge in, there is a shabby beauty to how their lives look on film that is reflective of the everyday experience they attempt to capture in their own work. When they bother to do it, that is.

For a complete rundown on the special features, read the full review at DVD Talk. 

PIERRE ETAIX: YOYO - #655

Pierre Étaix's second feature, Yoyo, finds the director and star confidently assuming the role of auteur. This 1965 vehicle is not only a great showcase for the performer's talent, but also a tribute to his heroes and the comedic tradition that informed the Étaix persona. It's a celebration of comedy, but also one clown's celebration of self.

Yoyo opens in the 1920s. Étaix plays a lonely millionaire who spends his fortune on elaborate entertainments to cure his ennui. Model boats, dancing girls, live music, alcohol--none of it can ease the man's true problem, his broken heart. The millionaire pines for a lost love.

This opening scenario is crafted as a silent film, albeit one with sound effects rather than a musical score. Étaix shows the millionaire's opulent life and the intricate design of his house via a series of sight gags. There is an important visual theme running through all of Yoyo, as Étaix explores the notion of illusion as it pertains to entertainment and how that relates to the illusions we create in our own lives. The millionaire is seeking happiness through simulacrum. None of his pleasures are real, they are designed.

Fate intervenes twice for the millionaire. First, when a traveling circus stops by to perform on his estate, and he realizes that his former lover is amongst their performers. She is a clown, as is her son, the young boy Yoyo (Philippe Dionnet). The child is inexplicably drawn to the millionaire's home, and he sneaks around the mansion, examining its many treasures, until the troupe's elephant, the boy's own guardian angel, comes looking for him. The connection should be obvious: Yoyo is the son the millionaire didn't know he had. A sort of paternal sixth sense has drawn them together. Fate's second intervention is the stock market crash, which forces the millionaire out of his home. With nowhere else to turn, he joins his long-lost family on the road, becoming a performer alongside Yoyo and his mother. Étaix times the onset of the Great Depression with the advent of "talkies," and so Yoyo shifts from silent expression and title cards to full dialogue.

Interestingly, though Yoyo is kind of designed as a mini-history of 20th-century entertainment, Étaix only pays tribute to motion pictures as sly asides. Yoyo's youth is spent traveling from town to town, perfecting his act with his parents and dreaming of one day having a real home like the one where he met his father. On one stop on their tour, the millionaire despairs to see that another circus has beaten them to the punch. The camera pans to a poster advertising a different show, and cinephiles will recognize Giulietta  Masina and Anthony Quinn from La Strada [review], Federico Fellini's cinematic tribute to the traveling circus. Indeed, little Yoyo's make-up is not that dissimilar to Masina's. Plus, both films pay tribute to Charlie Chaplin. Étaix does it twice, actually. First Yoyo's mother borrows the Tramp's act for her own, and later, when the narrative shifts to WWII, Étaix upends The Great Dictator [review] by showing Hitler similarly cosplaying as Chaplin's signature character. It's around here that Étaix takes over playing Yoyo as an adult, showing the clown performing for Allied soldiers before being captured by the Germans. It's actually a bizarre coincidence that years later Étaix would have a role in Jerry Lewis' infamous 1972 disaster The Day the Clown Cried, about a clown who performs for the prisoners of a concentration camp. Smartly, Étaix skips right over Yoyo's incarceration, instead moving straight to the post-War period when he returns to the circus.

(Quick Sidenote: I'd be remiss if I didn't mention that there was a mutual appreciation between Pierre Étaix and Federico Fellini. Only in researching for this series did I realize that I knew Étaix from his segment in Fellini's documentary I clowns, released in 1970, and reviewed by me here. Criterion fans might have also seen Étaix in a small role in Aki Kaurismäki's Le Havre [review].)

The war is addressed only indirectly following Yoyo's freedom. A soberness settles over the character, however, and he pours most of his energy and money into finally rebuilding his chateau. Étaix has split Yoyo into two halves, and the back part basically shows the son reliving the mistakes of his father. As he isolates himself, Citizen Kane-style, he becomes estranged from what matters. Yoyo finds new fame on television, but at the sacrifice of spontaneity and audience connection. Another illusion is shown here, as what we initially take as a despondent Yoyo performing on the street turns out to be Yoyo on the boob tube--though his skit truly represents what is in his heart.

At the same time, Yoyo also fails to seize on his love for the beautiful acrobat Isolina (Claudine Auger, a.k.a. Domino from Thunderball). Yoyo culminates in the ostentatious housewarming party the sad clown throws for himself. The closing of the picture thus mirrors the opening, as Yoyo's party guests engage in complicated slapstick and the host spends most of the event chasing down his own dissatisfaction with the situation he has created for himself. His redemption comes via another repeated image: the return of the elephant who was his childhood guardian. Yoyo's new friends flee in fear, but the grown man is otherwise reminded of everything the elephant represents, the memories he should have never forgot.

This makes way for Étaix's brilliant closing shot, a poetic return to the traditional performance space, a validation of the circus' capacity to entertain. The ending is almost clairvoyant, as Étaix himself would eventually leave his fame and return to his first love, though that was still half a decade away. Watching Yoyo, the mind boggles imagining the movies Pierre Étaix could have made had he stuck with it. With just his second feature, he shows himself as an entertainer with heart and insight, a worthy successor to Chaplin and the rest. Great comedy always has a bit of sadness, and Pierre Étaix is a clown who has the soul of a poet. Laughter is a sign of one's health and humanity, and like the character he portrayed, this performer's commitment to entertaining others, regardless of where he pursued it, was never more obvious or essential. 

Yoyo plays Thursday, April 18, and Saturday, April 20, as part of the NW Film Center's Pierre Étaix retrospective. View the full schedule here.

LE HAVRE - #619

This review originally appeared in The Portland Mercury.

Finnish director Aki Kaurismäki’s Le Havre is named for the French coastal town where it’s set. Huge metal containers pass through this port on their way to somewhere else. One such container is full of African refugees. When the door is cracked, a young boy (Blondin Miguel) makes a run for it. Stranded, he ends up hiding with Marcel (André Wilms), a harmless scoundrel known for his love of the vino. Marcel's wife has recently taken ill (Kati Outinen), and getting the kid to England gives the old man something to do while she’s in the hospital.

Le Havre has a quaint European affectation that’s both charming and inconsequential. The quirky small town pulls together to help Marcel, and they hold a benefit rock concert to pay off smugglers. Even the police turn a blind eye. The inspector in charge of the case (Jean-Pierre Darroussin) would rather be solving real crimes than chasing harmless immigrants. Darroussin is one of the film’s bright spots. With his smart patter, bowler hat, and moustache, he’s like an extra from Tintin [review].

Only Marcel's cranky neighbor, played by former wunderkind Jean-Pierre Léaud (The 400 Blows) goes against the community, though his snitching serves little function beyond instigating Le Havre’s third act.  By that time, the outcome of this little plot is never less than a foregone conclusion, a fact underlined by Timo Salminen’s melodramatic score in the final scenes. It’s blandly enjoyable, but really, Le Havre is just old-school Hollywood cheese filtered through a semi-ironic lens.

Kaurismäki (Leningrad Cowboys Go America [review]) has been peddling this same middling tone for several decades now. He’s like a Euro Woody Allen, dependable and occasionally surprising, but also somewhat dated. Le Havre feels like a leftover from an international film festival circa 1994. 

SIDELINE: MORE REVIEWS FOR 1/12

A round-up of the non-Criterion movies I saw in January, 2012.

IN THEATRES...

* Chronicle, a "found footage" superhero movie that could have just as easily stayed lost.

* Le Havre, Aki Kauirsmäki's newest has a familiar quirkiness, and not necessarily in a nourishing way. 

* The Man Nobody Knew: In Search of my Father, CIA Spymaster William Colby, a documentary as unwieldy as its title. Colby remains as much a mystery in the end as he was at the start.

* A Separation, Asghar Farhadi's remarkable Iranian family drama.

* The Woman in Black, Daniel Radcliffe's turn as the victim of an old-fashioned ghost story in this Hammer horror production.

ON DVD/BD...


* A Beautiful Life, Andrew Lau's melodramatic romance picture starring Shu Qi as a woman learning to love.

* The Big Country, a uniquely masculine western with Gregory Peck and Charlton Heston.

* Boardwalk Empire: The Complete First Season, an awesome Blu-Ray packaging of the Scorsese-helmed Prohibition-based television show.

* The English Patient, a sweeping epic spanning two timelines, though the one with Juliette Binoche is better than the more famous romantic storyline.

* Film Socialisme, Godard's most recent intellectual puzzler.

* Love Story: If love is never having to say you're sorry, but I hated this movie, doesn't someone still owe me an apology?

* Outrage: Way of the Yakuza, Takeshi Kitano enacting a bloody chess game with all the boredom of real chess.

* The Piano, Jane Campion's literary romance, starring Holly Hunter, Harvey Keitel, and a young Anna Paquin. (Get prepared to feel a little creepy, True Blood fans!)

AKI KAURISMAKI'S LENINGRAD COWBOYS - ECLIPSE SERIES 29

The 1990s were a weird time for independent film. For as lacking in character as much of popular culture was during the early part of the decade (you can keep the music; no, seriously, keep it), film got really quirky and odd. Much of this was attributed to Steven Soderbergh and Sex, Lies, and Videotape and the impact of the Sundance Film Festival. Soderbergh's debut effort came out in 1989, the same year Finnish filmmaker Aki Kaurismäki released Leningrad Cowboys Go America (79 minutes), a bizarre hybrid of mockumentary and road trip pictures that was right in line with the cinema to come.

Though, to be fair, Kaurismäki was more part of the previous generation of maverick filmmakers, including his influential admirer, Jim Jarmusch, who also appears in Leningrad Cowboys Go America, the first movie in Eclipse's Aki Kaurismäki's Leningrad Cowboys boxed set. The silver-haired New York director plays an auto mechanic who sells the European rock band the car that they will drive across most of America on their way to Mexico. Given the back and forth between the two movie men, it's a fitting metaphor. They trade their tools and share in the act of creation.

Leningrad Cowboys Go America is sort of like a mix of This is Spinal Tap and A Hard Day's Night. The line between the fiction and the reality that informs it is blurred. This could be a fake band pretending to go on the road, or it could be a real band pretending to go on the road. The operative word is "pretending." Kaurismäki took a Finnish group called the Sleepy Sleepers and turned them into a Russian band lacking in musical identity but overflowing with image. They are like a parody of the Soviet embrace of American pop following glasnost. Their extended pompadours and pointy shoes make them look like characters out of a Grimm fairy tale, some kind of Rumpelstiltskin in pimp clothes. Their music begins as traditional European folk, complete with accordion and brass, but morphs into rockabilly and punk as they travel the U.S. It's not hard to imagine a young Eugene Hutz seeing this movie and getting the inspiration for Gogol Bordello.

The music is fairly entertaining, with echoes of the performance art element of New Wave bands like Devo and Talking Heads. Some of the performances in the movie can be a little clumsy. The lip-synching can be pretty poor. Still, there is something amusing about the Monkees-esque comedy of the guys breaking out into songs they've never rehearsed just to fit in at their latest pick-up bar gig.

The rest of Leningrad Cowboys Go America is not nearly so amusing. Kaurismäki pushes the fish-out-of-water humor as far as it will go. The story essentially revolves around the band's manager Vladimir (Matti Pellonpää) keeping the guys moving and working, from the Big Apple down to Mexico where they are going to play a wedding for the relative of a scumbag promoter. Vladimir hoards the cash, spending it on beer and cracking the whip on the others. They are also hauling one of their fallen comrades, a guitarist who froze to death back home, on the roof of their car to show him the world before he is buried. And they also run into a long-lost cousin (Nicky Tesco), who works in a gas station.

While some of the antiquated plotting works, I have to admit that much of Leningrad Cowboys Go America seemed overly tame and contrived. The humor is silly and often lazy, and very much a product of its time. Remember, how I said it was weird back then? Leningrad Cowboys Go America is a movie where everyone seems to know they are being weird, and it kind of falls flat as a result. I know it was quite popular when it came out, but you know, tastes change. I'm also not saying Leningrad Cowboys Go America was bad, more that it was just inoffensive to the point of being ineffectual. It's like a cute MTV promo that a band would have made back then, relying on the group's image more than quality storytelling, like a Herman's Hermits or Elvis Presley movie. Only this time the band has no prior recognition or hit songs to float them by.

Though, to be fair, the Leningrad Cowboys would eventually take on a life of their own. Perhaps a more apt reference point is 1991's The Commitments, Alan Parker's hit movie about the Irish soul band that began as an acting ensemble initially put together for the picture that then jumped out of the film and became a real group for a while. The Leningrad Cowboys continued to play and tour after the first movie and before returning in a sequel. The second film, Leningrad Cowboys Meet Moses (1994; 94 mins.), follows the same basic premise of the first film, only now the journey is reversed. After several years as a successful band in Mexico, the Cowboys, now decked out in day-glo bandito gear, have drank away their fortunes on tequila. An offer to reform takes them to New York, where they discover the interested promoter is actually Vladimir. He has grown a beard, gotten a sliver of religion, and started calling himself Moses. He wants to make amends by leading his people back to Siberia. So begins a transcontinental road trip, once more full of ups and downs, peaking when the guys again realize Vladimir is cheating them.

Leningrad Cowboys Meet Moses is a kind of a mess. For whatever peculiarities marred Leningrad Cowboys Go America, at least they had a modicum of authenticity. By comparison, Leningrad Cowboys Meet Moses' humor is forced and lacking any grounding. Kaurismäki tries to turn this journey into a religious quest, complete with familiar iconography (a burning bush, a golden calf, etc.) and political opposition (a man named Lenin trades Marxist slogans with Vladimir's bible verses). There is also an absurd plot about Vladimir stealing the nose off the Statue of Liberty.

One thing I will give the second movie is that the music is more varied and thus comes off better. The performances are more polished and the material selected represents a more striking range, befitting the European setting. The best number is a tune reminiscent of '60s French rock, sung by Elijah (Andre Wilms), an agent pursuing the stolen nose. Perhaps it's fitting then that the final film in the trilogy, the hour-long Total Balalaika Show (1994), is purely a concert documentary. Shot in Helsinki in 1993, Kaurismäki captures the massive gathering of the Leningrad Cowboys with the 150-member Alexandrov Red Army Chorus and Dance Ensemble. Backed by this orchestra and choir, and standing in front of a huge audience filling the Senate Square, the Cowboys appear as tiny figures running through covers of familiar American hits and traditional Russian folk songs. They size of the concert nearly swallows them, but credit where it's due, they carry on admirably.

Kaurismäki shoots Total Balalaika Show with few frills. It seems about all he can do to just contain the stage in frame. He matches the aesthetics of the fictional films by using title cards to announce each song. The finished documentary suggests Total Balalaika Show was probably a concert that was more fun to attend than to watch on video. Given the size of the show, the musicians play to the cheap seats. The big gestures flatten out when boxed in this way. The songs themselves also lack much passion. This is kitschy theatre more than anything. The Cowboys don't exhibit much visible connection to songs like "Sweet Home Alabama." Only the more universal themes of something like Dylan's "Knocking on Heaven's Door" survive their mechanical accents and predictable musical arrangements--and even that is due in large part to the brass and the men's choir adding their grand tones. I closed my eyes and listened, and couldn't imagine anyone choosing to play a record of these songs all on their own. (Same goes for the five music videos, including one lazy rendition of the Doors track "L.A. Woman," that round out the third disc.)

It's hard for me to say if I got in a time machine and went back to see Aki Kaurismäki's Lenigrad Cowboys movies when they were first released if I would feel differently about them now. They are films very much of their time, utilizing a brand of twee anarchy that seemed fresh at the turn of the 1990s but that comes off as oh so quaint and stale now. Such self-involved humor can be a little tedious, and likely wouldn't survive without the music to break things up. Aki Kaurismäki's Lenigrad Cowboys is a well-intentioned, but essentially misguided lark.

For a complete rundown on the special features, read the full review at DVD Talk.

AKI KAURISMAKI'S PROLETARIAT TRILOGY - ECLIPSE SERIES 12

Finnish director Aki Kaurismäki is a filmmaker's filmmaker. Long before I had ever seen any of his films--which, admittedly, had been none up until now--I had heard his name bandied about by other directors who admired him. Most notably, he was often referenced by Jim Jarmusch, including the quintessential U.S. indie auteur crafting a segment of his brilliant Night on Earth as a tribute to Kaurismäki. Watching the movies that make up the boxed set Aki Kaurismäki's Proletariat Trilogy - Eclipse Series 12, it's easy to see why. Jarmusch has spotted a kindred spirit in this sardonic European creator. His wry stories of regular people quietly floundering through life don't follow regular Hollywood story logic, and his detached filming style gives the impression of behavior observed rather than concocted. As the name the Proletariat Trilogy suggests, the films in this set, made between 1986 and 1990, focus mainly on working-class heroes, the garbage men and the factory workers who aren't in the mainstream and yet keep it flowing all the same.

Watching the first feature in this collection, Shadows in Paradise (Varjoja paratiisissa - 1986), I actually started to wonder if the appreciation goes both ways, as there are a few items of business in the film reminiscent of Jarmusch's 1984 breakthrough Stranger than Paradise. Of course, there is the title, but there is also a forced romance that only really gathers steam on an impromptu road trip, itself precipitated in part by illegal acts. On the way back from it, the female lead Ilona (Kati Outinen) even says her original intention was to run away to Florida, though she had heard there was nothing there but other Finns and "Donald Ducks." Jarmusch's vision of paradise was Florida, as well, and his two male protagonists could pass for Donald Ducks in some circles.

The problem with Florida as a promised land for Ilona is that she has enough of nothing at home, so why go all the way around the world to find more? The sad-eyed blonde caught the eye of the awkward Nikander (Matti Pellonpää) while working as a cashier at the grocery store. Nikander is a garbage man who seemingly dreams of something better. He takes an English course that sounds like it could be for potential hotel managers. His friend at work offers him the chance of a better life by jumping ship and joining the new garbage company he's going to open, but no sooner does the older man say he doesn't want to die driving a garbage truck than he has a heart attack while collecting the morning's trash. Opportunity lost for Nikander.

There is a desperation in Nikander's advances on Ilona that is both sad and comical. He truly doesn't know what to do around her, and their first date is cut short when he takes her out for bingo and comes off as a bore. Yet, when she loses her job and steals the company cash box, Nikander is the only person Ilona can think of to help her out. Before long, she's moved in with him, having nowhere else to go. It's a romance of convenience. Any tenderness that passes between them is at first begrudging. Yet, as time goes on, Ilona does begin to care, and when Nikander finally gets aggressive and starts asserting his feelings, he actually becomes the man she wanted him to be all along. Coming to an agreement on love doesn't immediately transform their lives--as Nikander describes it, using the American idiom, it's "small potatoes"--but yet they manage to find some kind of security in their humble existence.

Portraying characters such as these could so easily become cruel parody, but Kaurismäki is never making fun of his creations, even when he is enjoying a laugh at their expense. Nikander in particular bears the brunt of the director's comic tendencies. Prone to outbursts of macho anger, he's at times tossed into the street and whacked upside the head with a wooden plank, as ineffectual at violence as he is at love. Yet there is something in his grim, silent determination that makes the audience root for the schlub despite it all. Karuismäki does give his lovers a way out, yet one also can't help but think no one will likely even notice they are gone. They themselves are the shadows of paradise, the unseen ghosts that come and go without much impact.

One of the funniest elements of the Kaurismäki style is the deadpan delivery. Outside of Nikander's bursts of anger, there is very little modulation to the emotions in Shadows. Love and sadness are delivered with the same stony face, the same low manner of speaking. So, too, do the characters in Ariel (1988) deal with tragedy, romance, and even action and violence--eyes always straight ahead, jaw tight, as if any state of being is just as good as another.

Taisto (Turo Pajala) is another loveable loser, one whose bad luck has taken on the proportions of a cosmic joke. In Ariel, he loses his job when the hometown coal mine closes, his father commits suicide, and he is hit over the head with a bottle and has his entire savings stolen. And that's just in the first ten minutes! The one thing he has going for him is the convertible his father gave him as his inheritance, but even that doesn't work quite right, as Taisto doesn't know how to put the top down and has to drive through freezing snow sitting out in the open. The Cadillac does get him to the city, however, and in Helsinki he finds work as a day laborer and love after a fashion with a meter maid who is giving him a parking ticket. Irmeli (Susanna Haavisto) is a single mother working multiple jobs to keep afloat. Romance for these two, just like the couple in the previous movie, is more like a convenient arrangement. Taisto says he wouldn't mind spending the night, if it isn't too much trouble, and Irmeli agrees that he might as well come in since it's already dark anyway.

Of course, luck doesn't hold out for Taisto, and when he spots one of his muggers and tries to get his cash back, he ends up in jail himself. In a gesture of simple means but grand meaning, Taisto makes Irmeli a ring in the metal shop where he wiles away the hours and proposes to her on visiting day. There's a subtle irony in that the trapped man sees marriage as a sign of hope, whereas the free man often sees marriage as a trap. Working with his stolid roommate, Mikkonen (Pellonpää again), Taisto plots how to get out of jail and run off with the girl. Thus, midway through, Ariel becomes a prison break movie, and then a film about fugitives on the run. Mikkonen and Taisto deal with some bad dudes, raise some cash the dishonest way, and plot a course for Mexico. They are laughable as criminals. Taisto drops the money while fleeing a robbery, and Mikkonen's tough-guy act falls apart when his actual lack of fighting skills is revealed, but somehow they manage to get the job done.

The closing shots of Ariel feature the cruise ship that gives the film its title. It's the means of escape for Taisto and his bride, and it ties Ariel to Shadows in Paradise in that that film also ends with its lovers leaving on a cruise ship. There are two different kinds of honeymoons happening here, but the meaning is the same: for Kaurismäki, the only respite from where you are at is to get away from it. Sure, Nikander and Ilona may have to come back one day, and Taisto may run into the law anywhere along the way on his flight from injustice, but there is no chance of happiness if you don't at least try to get out of Dodge. It's the same advice Taisto's father gives him before killing himself, which in itself is another kind of escape. Given the grim determination that gets Taisto out of jail and onto the ocean blue, one might assume that he displays any other emotion sparingly in order to save his energy for when it counts.

As the new family departs, Kaurismäki plays a Finnish-language version of "Somewhere Over the Rainbow." The performance of it sounds somewhat defiant, but also a tad bombastic, making it seem like a tongue-in-cheek choice, suggesting that Taisto's land of Oz is not quite the Technicolor dream of other movies. It fits right in with how Kaurismäki has used music throughout Ariel, establishing a kind of generation gap by juxtaposing more traditional ballads with American-inspired rock music. The plaintive crooners and the dour lyrics of the old songs underscore the romantic scenes in both Ariel and Shadows, exposing them for how anemic they really are, while the rock serves as the soundtrack for fighting back. Taisto and Mikkonen, for instance, blast their radio to distract the prison guard when they are escaping. Radios are also present everywhere in the movie, providing the working class with their one free and easily accessible source of entertainment.

The final film in Kaurismäki's trilogy, The Match Factory Girl (Tulitijjutehtaan tyttö - 1990), connects to the others through music, but otherwise breaks from convention in surprising and bold ways. In an early scene, its protagonist, Iris (a returning Kati Outinen), goes out to a dance and the crooner on stage sings a Finnish song about a better land far across the ocean, evoking memories of the endings of the two movies that preceded this one. From its very first scenes, however, Match Factory Girl is definitely different than what has come before. The black comedy has gotten so black, it's almost imperceptible. Kaurismäki's story of a lonely working-class girl is far more bleak than the other films it is packaged with.

Instead of showing men working with their hands, Match Factory Girl opens with an extended montage showing the many stages a matchstick goes through on an automated machine. Shot with a kind of visual poetry reminiscent of Louis Malle's automotive-plant documentary Human, Trop Humain, it creates an immediate disconnect: human hands are no longer involved in the actual production. At least not until the matches are cut, created, and boxed. Iris waits at the end to make sure the labels are affixed to the packaging properly. It's tedious, lonely work.

This isolation continues in her personal life, where she is disassociated from everyone around her. She lives with her mother (Elina Salo) and stepfather (Esko Nikkari), but it's not a loving family--she pays rent and cooks them dinner, and they ignore her by way of thanks. She goes out to that dance, but she sits by the wall, the only girl not invited out onto the floor. Outside of the television newscaster, there isn't even any spoken dialogue in the movie until fourteen minutes in when Iris orders a beer. Even after that, very little is said. Everyone is too caught up in themselves to communicate. The TV news that is constantly running at the apartment serves as commentary to show how small these lives are; the endless reports from Iran and the massacre at Tiananmen Square should tell them that there are bigger things than their inner turmoil, but it seems to pass right by.

Eventually, Iris does meet a man (Vesa Vierikko) who is interested in her, but his cold affections are a far cry from the romance novels Iris reads. Their one night of lovemaking ends for him when he leaves money by the bed (he is at least middle class, if not upper class, and it's a subtle comment on how his type view those "beneath him"), but it doesn't end for her until after she discovers she is pregnant. This brings consequences Iris did not expect, including getting kicked out of her house. Once again, Kaurismäki uses rock music to emphasize change, playing a version of "Brand New Cadillac," complete with the refrain "She ain't ever coming back," to show how Iris' life has irrevocably shifted. It's at this juncture that Match Factory Girl takes an unexpected twist into the macabre. The scenes of revenge that follow are played with such a poker face, one almost misses the dark comedy that is bubbling underneath. If not for the random action Iris takes in a bar, one might not notice at all how absurd it really is. The music even shifts again at the climax, Kaurismäki returning to his beloved crooners to give the last piece of Iris' plans a faux operatic tone.

Of all of Kaurismäki's steely characters, Iris is the saddest, and Kati Outinen portrays her as always on the brink of tears. The only time she does cry, ironically, is while watching a Marx Bros. movie! The quality of the performance is most apparent, though, in the subtle changes Outinen must show, both in the brief moments of bliss after the night of sex and then the turn Iris takes into contentment when she decides to right the wrongs done to her. In this, The Match Factory Girl is the most determinist entry of the Proletariat Trilogy: there is no escape outside, there is only the life you can make for yourself.

When it's all said and done, Aki Kaurismäki's Proletariat Trilogy - Eclipse Series 12 is a quirky tribute to the stoic persistence of the working class in the Baltic states. The odd character of these three films seems to not only reflect the outsider's perspective of their writer and director, but to be part and parcel with the disenfranchisement of its subjects and born of the cultural make-up of where they come from. Imbued with the randomness and often molasses-like pace of real life, Aki Kaurismäki uses film conventions like romance, prison breaks, and revenge plots only to subvert them to his own unique sensibility. There is pity to be found in the dramaturgy, but a gleeful empathy in the dark comedy. Definitely recommended.

For a full rundown on the special features, read the full article at DVD Talk.