Six years after the particularly well received LE HAVRE/’11, Finnish writer/director Aki Kaurismäki returned to features with another droll, yet serious (seriously droll?) and timely immigrant-plight drama, but crucially moving location from France to his homeland. It’s another parallel track fable, two men who cross paths going thru life-changing experiences. Locally: Middle-aged Finnish businessman bets all his assets to quit ‘the rag trade’ (and an alcoholic wife) to buy a restaurant, a remarkably successful establishment considering its drab look & even drabber Finnish cuisine. (It just survives a brief Japanese experiment featuring delicacies like pickled herring sushi.) And from Syria: Youngish refugee, illegally entering the country via coal chute (don’t ask) to navigate bureaucratic mazes and lose his case for asylum (he’s already lost a sister on the way), but escaping to be found by our depressed, but kindly disposed restauranteur. With signature visual precision & economy, Kaurismäki sprinkles his still, comic, deadpan style like fairy dust o’er all, with little camera movement to fuss up his exquisitely ‘right’ compositions and apt splotches of vivid color. How he parses between threatening moments of despair or physical violence with sheer grace & wry humor a Finnish mystery as inscrutable as an ‘impossible’ stunt from the Buster Keaton two-reel comic shorts he’s perhaps not so distantly related to.
DOUBLE-BILL: As mentioned above, LE HAVRE. OR: His latest, not seen here, but due in Cannes any moment, FALLEN LEAVES / KUOLLEET LEHDET/’23.
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