He did not steal his Jury Prize from the last Cannes Film Festival. Aki Kaurismäki is good for the soul with Dead leaves, a thwarted love story between two lonely beings. Alma Pöysti and Jussi Vatanen are very touching in this crossover between a supermarket cashier and a worker who is addicted to drinking. After In the distance the clouds go in 1996, The Man Without a Past in 2002, and The Lights of the suburbs in 2006, “it was supposed to be a trilogy, but this film is the fourth part. I don’t even know how to count to four,” laughs the director. And again, he forgets his dualogy on migrations, Le Havre (2011) and The Other Side of Hope (2017), which could also have appeared in this “trilogy”.
Everything is doped with tenderness and punctuated by the information that a radio station broadcasts on the situation in Ukraine. “I couldn’t make this film without talking about this war,” insists Aki Kaurismäki. I had to anchor this love story in today’s world. » Tragedy looms over the lovers who find and then get lost in a hostile city where they try to survive. It almost feels like a classic romantic comedy. Except that the director rediscovers the poetry which constitutes the charm of his cinema.
His best film since the last
“I take my too-small hat off to Bresson, Ozu and Chaplin, my domestic deities,” insists the director who pays homage to the 7th art, capable of temporarily making us forget conflicts and misery. Bittersweet tale like an autumn afternoon, Dead leaves borrows its title from Jacques Prévert for distill an invigorating humanism hidden under humor in the form of the politeness of despair. “Writing the script took me thirty hours over five days,” asserts the director. I slowly matured it in my subconscious with this idea of melancholy and war. »
Aki Kaurismäki’s great delicacy is still just as perceptible, taking the viewer towards characters that life has not spoiled and towards a dog played by the director’s own pet. “I did my best as always, hoping that the public will follow. It’s the best film I’ve done since the last one,” he jokes. Following his reasoning, we impatiently await the next one, the sixth opus of his trilogy, a drama which should be ready in two years “if I am still in this world. » We keep our fingers crossed for him and for us other spectators.