Modestly scaled and tonally perfect, “Fallen Leaves” opens in a fluorescent hell-on-earth and ends with a vision of something like paradise.
A lot of the drinks are downed hurriedly and often furtively by a man, while elsewhere a woman listens to sad songs.
A Finnish writer-director best known on the international festival circuit (“Fallen Leaves” won a major award at the 2023 Cannes), Kaurismaki makes movies — precise, austere, plaintive — that resist compartmentalization.
Set in contemporary Helsinki, “Fallen Leaves” opens on the woman who listens to sad songs; it’s a habit that suggests she’s a familiar genre type — she isn’t.
That’s pretty much what happens when a supermarket manager later fires Ansa for taking some expired food.
Persons:
Aki, Kaurismaki, she’s, Alma Poysti, Ansa, Kaurismaki doesn’t
Locations:
Finnish, Cannes, Helsinki, —, Ukraine