It’s one of the gems of the last Cannes Film Festival, a rare, funny, modest film, concocted by the Finnish filmmaker Aki Kaurismäki (Le Havre, The Man Without a Past), who always keeps it simple. This time, it tells a moving love story between two shy people who meet by chance in a city flooded with fog, Helsinki, as if frozen in an era, that of transistors, bistros and jukeboxes. There may be posters of Contempt and Rocco and his brothers, but we are in 2023 in a world where disorder and solitude reign.
Holappa is a construction site worker and Ansa works in a supermarket. He teases aquavit a little too much and quickly loses his job. Ditto for her, who made the mistake of giving expired food to a homeless person. Ansa lives in a small apartment and listens every evening on the radio to news of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which shares a long border with Finland. Holappa lines the glasses while thinking of his buried youth. Nothing fancy, and yet their story touches the heart.
They are two lonely, mute souls who meet by chance one evening at a karaoke show. He takes the opportunity to cover Finnish rock of absolute darkness, which contrasts with melancholic songs from another age and mambo Italiano.
They both look at each other without speaking. For their first date, they go to see The Dead Don’t Die, by Jim Jarmush, at the cinema, which one spectator compares to… Robert Bresson. We laugh despite this melancholy that grips the characters. She scribbles her cell phone number on a piece of paper, which it immediately loses, blown away by a gust of wind. Will they meet again? Suspense. They end up meeting at a dinner at Ansa’s, who asks her to choose between her and the bottle. Jussi Vatanen/Holappa walks with his tall figure and his longing for life, while Alma Pöysti/Ansa says everything on his face: resignation, tenderness and hope for a better life together.
His cinema is light as air, fluid, pure, surprising. Like these Dead Leaves, a moving romance whose ending is a nod to the Charlie Chaplin of Modern Times: a woman and a man move away on a road towards a future that we imagine is full of promise.
Les Feuilles mortes, d’Aki Kaurismäki, avec Alma Pöysti, Jussi Vatanen, Janne Hyytiäinen… Durée: 1 h 21, en salle mercredi 20 september.
