Love's Resilience in Fallen Leaves

Release Date：Nov/17/2023

Genre：Comedy/Drama/Romance

Director：Aki Kaurismäki

Cast：Alma Pöysti、Jussi Vatanen、Janne Hyytiäinen、Nuppu Koivu、Mia Snellman

Viola's Rating：8.6

Winning the Jury Prize at the 76th Cannes Film Festival and being one of the 15 shortlisted feature films as the Finnish entry for Best International Feature Film at the 96th Academy Awards, Fallen Leaves, Finnish director and screenwriter Aki Kaurismäki’s latest film after he announced his short-lived retirement in 2017, was released limited in the US on Nov 17, 2023.

Being considered as the extension of Kaurismäki’s proletariat trilogy, this romantic comedy is set in modern-day Helsinki, where two lonely souls in search of love meet by chance in a karaoke bar. However, their path to happiness is beset by obstacles - from lost phone numbers to unexpected accidents and alcoholism.

While France has Stéphane Brizé making workplace trilogy, Finland has Kaurismäki focusing on the social class of wage-earners. In Fallen Leaves, the protagonists are contract workers, and they lose their jobs repeatedly. However, instead of giving up, they continue looking for their next job, and try to live their lives to the fullest. Although lives seem bleak to them, they believe that there’s always hope.

These characters are like the title of the flick, fallen leaves. There are a bunch of them. Even if you sweep them away, there’ll still be more of them. They seem valueless, but they add colors to the city and each other’s lives. Even though the protagonists are only middle-aged people, it feels that they’re already fallen leaves in their lives, and it really is a beautiful outcome that they could find each other in this time of their lives.

Although the background of the story is set in the modern world, audiences won’t see any digital gadgets in Fallen Leaves. Instead, there are a lot of nostalgic elements in the motion picture, including jukebox, life without any kind of cell phone at all, old-school karaoke and pub, radio, etc. Within the 80 minutes, moviegoers are brought back to the good old days for some pure romance along with the hues and the music choices.

Just like every love story, true love must stand the test of obstacles. It may be a little bit cliché, and this kind of story probably doesn’t exist in the modern world anymore, but just like the director said, “It felt like this bloody world needed some love stories now,” this kind of purest and simplest love story is just exactly what the world needs right now.

We’re so used to the world is how it is, but we may not truly wonder about the meaning and reason behind it. When food products are expired in convenience stores or supermarkets, shop owners would rather toss everything away than give them to the homeless or let staff take them home. It sounds “fair” to most people in society, but Fallen Leaves provides us a different perspective to see the world.

Picture Credit: IMDb