Fallen Leaves, which follows two people trying to survive the modern world, is one of the year’s best films.
Ansa, the taciturn protagonist of Fallen Leaves, lives a rather gloomy existence. She works at a supermarket in Helsinki, Finland, stocking shelves and monotonously pricing items under a security guard’s brooding eye. She trudges home every night to a small apartment, listening to bleak radio reports about the Russia-Ukraine war just across the border. In the film’s opening scene, she microwaves a dinner she takes home from work, gives it one look, and throws it in the garbage, uneaten. Her name, literally translated from Finnish, means “trap”—as in, she’s trapped by her life.
But did I mention that this film is one of the funniest, most winning comedies of the year? Fallen Leaves is the latest work from the Finnish writer and director Aki Kaurismäki, who channels his country’s dry and mordant outlook on life into quietly uproarious material. Many of his films are social satires: His 2002 masterpiece The Man Without a Past was a look at life among Helsinki’s homeless, while 2011’s Le Havre and 2017’s The Other Side of Hope examined Europe’s ongoing refugee crisis. But Kaurismäki always makes his bigger points slyly, weaving them into tragicomic tales of regular people struggling to carve out an existence—people like Ansa (played by Alma Pöysti), who indeed seems stuck even after she meets Holappa (Jussi Vatanen), another wayward soul in search of connection.
Holappa is a construction worker and semi-functioning alcoholic with a disposition that seems, even by Finnish standards, quite sorrowful. He, like Ansa, is in his mid-40s, stuck living alone and doing menial work under the thumb of a grumpy boss. Wherever Helsinki’s cool nightlife might be located, both characters seem far from it—instead, they gather at a drab-looking social hall where singletons bleat karaoke to stony-faced fellow customers. I’ve long wondered if Kaurismäki is having more than a little fun with his country’s reputation as the most taciturn Nordic nation, a standing that fits amusingly alongside statistics claiming that it is one of the world’s happiest.
But any time Fallen Leaves feels like it’s edging into maudlin territory by depicting the sameness of its characters’ lives, Kaurismäki punctures the mood with a droll quip. Yes, Ansa and Holappa are clearly in need of human tenderness, but this is not some ultrarealistic presentation of social decay. While some of Kaurismäki’s other films make sharper points about Europe’s social democracies needing to extend their help to the less fortunate, Fallen Leaves is more tightly focused on this one couple, making a general entreaty for kindness in an era of isolation.
Read: The Finnish director making the most-interesting movies about immigration
Still, the inclusion of those radio broadcasts about atrocities in Ukraine, and ever-brewing tension on the Russian border, is not idle background noise. Finland recently joined NATO after decades of neutrality on the topic; Kaurismäki is clearly gauging the national mood as pessimistic in the face of the Russian state’s revived militarism. Fallen Leaves is not about characters addicted to doomscrolling on their phones, but that’s the overall texture of the atmosphere surrounding its two protagonists—an overwhelming fatalism, given the world’s turmoil, and a sense that things can’t improve.
Again, Fallen Leaves is a comedy, and a consistently funny one, even if most of its laugh lines are gruffly delivered. The mood might be grim, and Ansa and Holappa might be convinced of their own inability to progress, but slowly they do, engaging in a halting romance that must weather their mutual suspicion that happiness simply can’t be around the corner. Ansa disapproves of Holappa’s drinking, while he chafes under her demands that he work toward self-improvement. But even as Kaurismäki throws obstacles in their way, there’s somehow little doubt on the viewer’s behalf that they’ll figure something out.
That’s why I’d argue that Fallen Leaves is, for all its intended quietness, one of the most trenchant works about modern life to emerge in cinemas, post-pandemic. I’ve never been to Helsinki, nor am I an alcoholic construction worker, but I strongly identified with the feeling of these characters, the foreboding shroud of the modern world they’re wrapped up in, and their slight but meaningful efforts to search for something better. Fallen Leaves is 81 minutes long and light on dialogue, its third most pivotal character is a wayward dog Ansa takes into her life—yet it’s one of the best movies of the year.
A Must-See Comedy About Miserable People Looking for Love
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17.11.2023
Fallen Leaves, which follows two people trying to survive the modern world, is one of the year’s best films.
Ansa, the taciturn protagonist of Fallen Leaves, lives a rather gloomy existence. She works at a supermarket in Helsinki, Finland, stocking shelves and monotonously pricing items under a security guard’s brooding eye. She trudges home every night to a small apartment, listening to bleak radio reports about the Russia-Ukraine war just across the border. In the film’s opening scene, she microwaves a dinner she takes home from work, gives it one look, and throws it in the garbage, uneaten. Her name, literally translated from Finnish, means “trap”—as in, she’s trapped by her life.
But did I mention that this film is one of the funniest, most winning comedies of the year? Fallen Leaves is the latest work from the Finnish writer and director Aki Kaurismäki, who channels his country’s dry and mordant outlook on life into quietly uproarious material. Many of his films are social satires: His 2002 masterpiece The Man Without a Past was a look at life among Helsinki’s homeless, while 2011’s Le Havre and 2017’s The Other Side of Hope........
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