Fallen Leaves review – Aki Kaurismäki’s timely romance is a thing of simple beauty

Aki Kaurismäki has been exploring the question of how to live in our unjust world since his start in cinema. His first fiction feature, from 1983, was an ambitious attempt at answering that question – a modern adaptation of Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment, perhaps the most complex literary work about morality in a corrupt and distressing society. Fallen Leaves, his latest film showing in competition at the 2023 Cannes Film Festival, takes a more direct, simple approach to that subject, while paying homage to that first film and addressing our current context.

In the supermarket where she works as a cashier, Ansa (Alma Pöysti) is scanning an impressive amount of packaged meat that piles up at the end of her counter – a reference to the operatic opening sequence of Crime and Punishment, in which the (anti)hero cleans the bloody quarters of the slaughterhouse where he works with a water hose. While the meat in that film was a sinister hint about this soon-to-be murderer, it has a more indirect, broader meaning in Fallen Leaves. No one dies in this film and nothing too dramatic happens, yet violence is still in the air. Once home, Ansa turns on the radio to hear graphic reports about the invasion of Ukraine by Russian forces. She listens intently for a while, before changing the station for some music.

While Le Havre and The Other Side of Hope addressed the specific topic of the immigration crisis directly, Fallen Leaves is a more general look at what life is like for people who may not be fleeing conflict, but who try to survive in a society where capitalism and uncertainty reign. For no good reason, Ansa is fired from her job and can no longer afford to listen to her radio. Meanwhile, Holappa (Jussi Vatanen) is another victim of our modern times who tries to drink away his sorrows. At a karaoke bar, their eyes meet and what follows is their crossed narratives as they try to make a living, but also to meet again.

Kaurismäki doesn’t just raise questions – he also offers some answers which, in their simplicity and modesty, are both romantic and realistic. Singing and going to the cinema make life easier, and Schubert is helpful, too. The filmmaker reuses the composer’s Serenade, already beautifully featured in a sung Finnish version in Crime and Punishment, clearly a piece that must have helped him over the years. More recent art is also a source of solace and although this writer wasn’t a fan of Jim Jarmusch’s The Dead Don’t Die, it is exciting and endearing that Kaurismäki finds it worthwhile to pay tribute to his contemporaries within his work.

It feels almost redundant to try and write about what makes this film good. All the usual Kaurismäki traits are present – the Bressonian acting, the dramatic and colourful lighting, the music – but they are here used to tell the purest of stories, one that is best enjoyed straight, as and for what it is. Boy meets girl may be a basic structure for a narrative, but when the world is burning, its simple beauty is exactly what’s needed.

Fallen Leaves was screened as part of the Cannes Film Festival 2023. A UK release date is yet to be announced.