Category: Directed by Aki Kaurismäki
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The Match Factory Girl is a hyper-focused character study. It opens with the visually fascinating process of a match factory before introducing lead Kati Outinen. Technically protagonist, obviously more subject. She quite noticeably doesn’t talk for the first twenty minutes or so, which says more about her situation than her character—no one’s interested in what…
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I spent much of Take Care of Your Scarf, Tatjana waiting for the character, played by Kati Outinen, to forget her scarf because I thought the title was Don’t Forget Your Scarf, Tatjana. I knew the film only ran sixty-two minutes and so assumed there’d be some scarf-forgetting. Oops. Is there scarf-forgetting? No spoilers. But…
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The Bohemian Life is almost a farce. Kaurismäki is doing a version of the La bohème story–though he’s not concerned with it being a modernization as much as filming it in modernity–and his use of symbolism is exaggerated. He’s making sure the viewer knows what he’s doing and why. These moments of exaggeration don’t come…
The Stop Button 