Fallen Leaves forms the fourth part of Finnish director Aki Kaurismäki’s ‘Proletariat’ series, after Shadows in Paradise, Ariel, and The Match Factory Girl. Although it is centred around a love story between two drifting and lonely souls, Fallen Leaves is very much a political and somewhat dejected film which makes the fractured connection between the protagonists Ansa (Alma Pöysti) and Holappa (Jussi Vatanen) all the sweeter despite their often dire circumstances and leaves the audience with a sense of respect for the characters that populate it.
Ansa works a minimum wage supermarket job where she is fired without notice because she dares to try to take home some expired food. Holappa is a barely functional alcoholic construction worker who loses his job after an accident. They have previously spotted each other at a karaoke night in a crowded but desultory bar where working people take to the stage and sing, sometimes things as unlikely as Schuman.
Using her very last few Euros Ansa goes to an internet café to apply for a job in a bar. The cost to use the internet for even a few minutes is extortionate, yet the owner insists that it is the very best technology (it is as worn out as the streets of Helsinki that Ansa and Holappa walk). Ansa takes a job at an even sadder bar than the karaoke joint ‘The Californian Club’ where within a week she is once again without work because the owner is arrested for selling drugs.
The drudgery of her life is further highlighted by her lonely house where she owns only enough crockery and cutlery for one person. When she finally properly meets Holappa he does her the small kindness of buying her a coffee and a pastry – a kindness that perhaps Ansa is unused to. They agree to go on a date to the cinema.
The cinema date is a highlight in the film. The movie they’ve chosen in Jim Jarmusch’s The Dead Don’t Die (Jarmusch once appeared in Kaurismäki’s absurdist road-trip film Leningrad Cowboys Go to America). Outside the cinema patrons compare the work to Bresson and Godard. Posters of classic cinema line the wall, and Ansa says in the dour staccato styled dialogue “It was hilarious. I have never laughed so much in my life,” – of course this is far from her reaction in the cinema. Holappa offers to walk her home, she demurs. It is too early for romance, yet she gives him her number (not her name) which promptly flies out of his pocket forever lost as he reaches for a cigarette.
Echoes of Leo McCarey’s An Affair to Remember and the films inspired of it run through the film. There is also a specific Sirkian feel to the piece despite the muted colours which are only relieved by Ansa’s bright coats and clothing. Ansa’s life may be drab and punctuated by incipient poverty and unending news of the invasion of Ukraine, but for all her melancholy she has a brittle sense of humour that she shows when she is with her friend.
Holoppa also has a friend, a man convinced he will be discovered singing by a talent scout. Such vain hopes keep people going. But for Holoppa who has lost his second job and has nothing to do but haunt the cinema where he had a date with Ansa, most of his hope is found in a bottle. “I drink because I am depressed. I am depressed because I drink.”
Finally Ansa and Holoppa reunite outside the cinema where she tells him her name and invites him to dinner which turns out to be a disaster because Holoppa cannot go more than an hour without searching for a drink. Ansa calls the who thing off having lost a father and brother to alcohol and Holoppa eventually finds himself at rock bottom and sleeping on the streets or temporary shelter. Is there anything in life for him?
The tragicomic tone of the film is perfectly presented. Every staged moment and interaction is beautifully shot with an eye for composition expressing emotion. Where the characters do not emote the camerawork and production design do it for them. Where they do not speak a small gesture tells all. Even the acquisition of a lonely street dog by Ansa who she names Chaplin (and really can’t afford to feed) is a window into the life of the character as well as a well-placed reference by Kaurismäki.
The film’s structure seems built on whims. The whims of chance which bring our lovers together and separate them. The whims of a capitalistic society that can crush people without note or second thought. The whims of an oligarch to invade a country not his own (which shares a border with Finland) and displace and destroy so many lives. Fallen Leaves is also whimsical – but never overly sentimental. Its whimsy comes from Kaurismäki style – distant yet somehow intimate, old worldly but set now. Rotary phones, old radios, and jukeboxes are integral props. Even the costuming of Holoppa and Ansa has a decidedly retro feel (this is especially true for Holoppa’s would be crooner friend who looks like he stepped out of a late 1950s film). The visuals might seem quirky in places, but Kaurismäki also takes us through an industrialised and depressed Helsinki that has no romance built into it.
Perhaps the lack of romance of the setting is precisely why the romance in the film is so important. Ansa warrants something more than a tiny apartment and an uncertain future. Holoppa must learn his own self-worth to be deserving of Ansa. They are people who will struggle through life as they exist on the lower tiers of the working class, but they merit dignity, something Kaurismäki afford them through their improbable romance.
Fallen Leaves is a film that can be termed warm and affectionate despite the deliberately staged ennui. Alma Pöysti who was brilliant in Tove once again shows her talent for vulnerable but resilient characters. Jussi Vatanen has more than a touch of the sad sack James Stewart to him as Holoppa which makes one feel more inclined to empathise with him rather than pity him. Fallen Leaves has a lot to grapple with in its brief run-time (81 minutes) but never feels rushed or like it has left something important out. Kaurismäki’s deliberate filmmaking immerses you in a melancholy world but one that never tries too hard to pull the heartstrings and does not need to be overtly didactic to make its point.
Director: Aki Kaurismäki
Cast: Alma Pöysti, Jussi Vatanen, Alina Tomnikov
Writer: Aki Kaurismäki
