fallen leaves (w&d kaurismaki)

The Finnish maestro, who throws some Gardel into his Helsinki set love story, reminds us of the power of simplicity. Woman meets Man, they encounter obstacles, they would appear to overcome them. Everything is stripped back. The camera is static, the acting is static, the narrative is by numbers. Only in his dialogue, with its offbeat humour, and his choice of film posters which populate the background (Brief Encounter, Pierrot le Fou, etc) does Kaurismaki let his hair down a bit. The simplicity is almost two dimensional and yet, by a mysterious alchemy, it is incredibly effective. The audience is sucked into the vortex of his two working class lovers, in spite of jerry-built obstacles which would never pass the BFI development stress test. (He walks into a tram, she, a woman with no apparent history, conveniently comes from a family of alcoholics). The final pay-off, as Ansa reveals the name of her dog, is a homage to the years of the early, silent cinema, and there is something about that era’s seemingly naive use of story and emotion which is echoed by Fallen Leaves. In contrast to the more baroque filmmaking of his Nordic compañero, Roy Andersson, Kaurismaki revels in how much you can do with how little. The language of dramatic storytelling is not as complex as some would like to think.