If you’re vibing with Aki Kaurismäki‘s droll wavelength of dry comedies about strange individuals in Helsinki, “Fallen Leaves” is unquestionably for you. This heat and witty romantic comedy about two misplaced souls adrift, who finally discover one another on the existential carousel to nowhere, received a Jury Prize on the 2023 Cannes Film Festival (the place Ruben Östlund served as Jury President) and now represents Finland within the 2024 Best International Feature Film Oscar race. IndieWire shares the unique trailer for this MUBI launch beneath on the heels of its New York Film Festival premiere.
The newest movie from the Finnish director of “The Man Without a Past” and “Le Havre” tells the story of two lonely individuals. Ansa (whose title actually means “trapped” in Finnish and who’s performed splendidly by Alma Pöysti) and Holappa (Jussi Vatanen, additionally unbelievable), in between soul-numbing blue-collar jobs, meet one another by probability within the Helsinki night time and possibly uncover the primary, solely, and supreme love of their lives. And additionally a shared love of flicks. Their path towards this worthy purpose is clouded by Holappa’s alcoholism, misplaced telephone numbers, not understanding one another’s names or addresses, and life’s normal obstacles, particularly the best way we self-sabotage our personal shot at human connection at our most agoraphobic moments.
This light-on-its-feet tragicomedy is the most recent entry in Aki Kaurismäki’s collection of working-class movies (“Shadows in Paradise,” “Ariel,” and “The Match Factory Girl”).
Kaurismäki was nominated for the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar in 2003 for “Man Without a Past,” although he sat the ceremony out in protest of the Iraq War.
“A lucid and brittle ode to the little beauties of life that can be easy to lose sight of without the benefit of seeing them on the big screen, ‘Fallen Leaves’ may be endowed with the spirit of a fable and the romantic sweep of a Sirkian melodrama, but its faith in our ability to find light in the darkness never feels the least bit false or naive, because to watch this movie is to find it there too,” wrote David Ehrlich in his IndieWire review out of Cannes.
MUBI will launch “Fallen Leaves” theatrically within the U.S. on November 17.
