Fallen Leaves: Kaurismäki’s Latest Dry Comedy is 'Chaplin-esque,' But Not The Way You Might Think
By Thom Ernst
Rating: A
The parting word in Aki Kaurismäki’s Fallen Leaves is “Chaplin,” delivered like a punchline in an 81-minute joke—a good joke, but one that, like a cartoon in the New Yorker, needs a beat or two to fully appreciate.
But “Chaplin” is not just the last word of the last sentence. Chaplin is the sentence. It says all you need to know about Kaurismäki’s latest film—the fourth in Kaurismäki’s proletarian trilogy (Go figure)—while saying nothing about its ending.
Fallen Leaves—nominated at Cannes for a 2023 Palme d’Dor--is a comedy, but specifically a Kaurismäki comedy best described as droll, at least as I understand the word to mean.
Social maladroit Ansa (Alma Pöysti) and Holappa (Jussi Vatanen) having fun in Fallen Leaves
It’s so droll that you might have missed the joke until Chaplin’s name is dropped in the final moment of the final frame. This would be the Chaplin where charm supersedes slapstick, and the dynamics of the working class is a character in and of itself. Such is the precise use of Kaurismäki’s instrument for language that he’s capable of conveying a revelation with a single word.
But if Chaplin is droll, then Kaurismäki is droller. There is nary a moment in the film when the film’s protagonists Holappa (Jussi Vatanen) and Ansa (Alma Pöyst) smile, so that in the rare moments when they do, the contrast is alarming; their faces beaming like network celebrities in a Macy’s Christmas parade. It never lasts long.
Fallen Leaves is not likely to be pursued by an American remake but if that should happen, it could only star Adam Driver and Aubrey Plaza.
Holappa is a handsome recluse who favours drink over socializing. He doesn’t think to provide anyone with his first name, and he’s not good with rules and even worse with authority. Alma is an attractive woman with a cold demeanor, but a warm spot for the underdog. She too suffers from fleeting employment. Both are ill-equipped when it comes to navigating romance.
They meet at a karaoke bar, having been dragged there by more socially abled friends (Martti Suosalo and Nuppu Koivu). An interest is sparked. Nothing earth-shattering, nothing life-changing—more of a sustained curiosity that pushes them into a date.
They go to the movies.
In its way, and that way would be decidedly subversive, Fallen Leaves is a romantic comedy about movies.
There’s the whole Chaplinesque vibe, and a tone reminiscent of Jim Jarmusch’s Stranger Than Paradise. As if to confirm the suspicion, the film the couple see on their first date is Jarmusch’s zombie flick, The Dead Don’t Die (2019). When Holappa asks Alma what she thought of the film she replies, “I’ve never laughed so much.” We never see her laugh, and yet we believe her. That, and though Jarmusch’s film is about flesh-eating zombies in which most of the entire cast is devoured, it is billed as a comedy.
Is this Kaurismäki’s nod to what he might presume would be a North American audience’s response to his film? An audience wondering, “Where’s the funny in this dry, social dramancedy (drama+romance+comedy) that merits its billing as a comedy?”
Kaurismäki does not shrink from present-day buzz-kills like updates on Russia’s attacks against Ukraine, or the afflictions of poverty on Helsinki’s working class. But here again, is the contrast; even amid conflict, things charming and funny can occur.
Fallen Leaves is directed by Aki Kaurismäki and stars Jussi Vatanen, Alma Pöysti, Martti Suosalo and Nuppu Koivu. It opens in theatres Friday, November 24.