The Match Factory Girl (1990, Aki Kaurismäki)

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 Outinen has to say.

She works, rides the bus home reading romance novels, then cooks and cleans for mother Elina Salo and stepfather Esko Nikkari. When she’s feeling adventurous, she goes out to the neighborhood dance hall and waits in vain for a man to ask her to dance. Then it’s back to work, back to the romance novels, back to cooking and cleaning; she even gives her paycheck to Salo and Nikkari ostensibly for rent, but they clearly don’t work. We don’t get any exposition laying it out, but when we meet Outinen’s brother, Silu Seppälä, he’s got a couple informative lines.

Director Kaurismäki’s script fills in very little on Outinen’s ground situation; outside Seppälä, there’s a little bit implied about the relationship between Outinen and Salo, done through set dressings and lingering shots, not dialogue. From the start, when Outinen’s just moving through her days, Kaurismäki juxtaposes those silent activities against television news coverage of Tiananmen Square. Heavy contrast between events in the world and Outinen’s despondently mundane existence.

At least until she decides she’s had enough and she’s going to get something for herself. She gets a pretty dress, which leads to trouble at home—and establishes the financial situation Salo and Nikkari, as well as some of the extent of the abuse Outinen has been suffering at their hands—and then to Outinen breaking bad. Of course, Outinen’s breaking bad is just, you know, going out and having a bigger beer than usual at a night club and not the local dance joint.

At the night club, Outinen meets greasy yuppie Vesa Vierikko; after a night together, she thinks they’re dating, he does not. Lots of complications ensue.

Match Factory Girl doesn’t even run a full seventy minutes, so when Kaurismäki veers off the predicted trajectory for the third act, it all of a sudden becomes a (muted) thrill a minute. We’ve spent the entire film seemingly understanding at least Outinen’s capabilities but as her environment becomes more and more hostile to her… she goes a different route. The story’s always tragic in one way or another, but Kaurismäki takes it to new heights (depths?) of tragedy by the end.

Outinen’s fantastic. She’s good throughout but the big character “change” in the third act is entirely through her performance whereas Kaurismäki’s direction has been doing a lot of framing until that point. It’s still a character study at the end, just with Outinen running the show instead of Kaurismäki and… oh, he edited it too. So Kaurismäki. Timo Salminen’s photography is excellent but it’s all about the editing when it comes to how Kaurismäki crafts the narrative distance.

The supporting cast is all good. But they’re all entirely in support of Outinen, even when she’s not in the shot with them—which only happens a few times.

Exceptional work from Outinen and Kaurismäki. It’s amazing what they can do in an hour and nine minutes.

Take Care of Your Scarf, Tatjana (1994, Aki Kaurismäki)

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 it definitely focused my attention on Outinen’s scarf and potential forgetfulness, which isn’t really her character at all.

Tatjana is a road movie, with Outinen and her friend Kirsi Tykkyläinen traveling the Finnish landscape, teamed up with locals Matti Pellonpää and Mato Valtonen. Outinen is Estonian, Tykkyläinen is Russian; Outinen speaks a little Finnish, Tykkyläinen none, so they take what they can get with traveling companions. While the film opens on Outinen and Tykkyläinen—and the scarf—the action immediately moves to Valtonen.

Valtonen is a seamster, existing on stolen puffs from his mother’s cigars and an endless supply of coffee. When he runs out of coffee, he promptly locks his mom (Irma Junnilainen) in the closet so he can steal from her purse—Valtonen, the actor, is forty-ish in Scarf; it’s unclear if his character is supposed to be much older or younger, but he’s clearly a grown ass man stealing from his mother’s purse, not to mention locking her in a closet. He’s expecting a package of coffee (or thinks his mom’s getting one), but instead unwraps a twelve-volt coffee maker. And, as one does, decides to try it out in his car on a test drive.

See, Valtonen’s car is in fellow child grown over Pellonpää’s shop. Once they get the bill settled and Pellonpää dons his rocker leather jacket, they hit the road. They have a fairly nondescript test drive, with Valtonen guzzling coffee and Pellonpää drinking bottle after bottle of vodka—until they meet Outinen and Tykkyläinen. The women need a ride to the harbor to catch a boat and it’s not like the men have anything better to do.

So begins their quietly devastating journey, where the men never quite understand the women—both Valtonen and Pellonpää seem fundamentally incapable of expressing themselves in a way anyone else can understand; they aren’t even friends with each other, just fellow stalled travelers—and the women soften to their absurd, slightly tragic ferrymen.

Tatjana’s got its fair share of absurdities starting out—at no point does it seem like mom Junnilainen is in any actual danger in her closet prison—so when the road trip takes multiple full days, it never seems unlikely. Director Kaurismäki doesn’t have time in an hour to wait for the audience to catch up, either you’re keeping pace or you’re left behind, and the quartet finds themselves in these mundane but exquisitely peculiar situations together.

It all wraps up beautifully, with Kaurismäki getting to amp up the absurd in such a way to make it all the more grounded.

Gorgeous, deep, lush black and white photography from Timo Salminen. Great direction (and editing) from Kaurismäki. The acting from the four leads is good. Tykkyläinen has the showiest part—and it’s still not very showy—and is a lot of fun.

Tatjana’s a great use of an hour.