Fallen Leaves (2023)
Aki Kaurismäki has spent the better part of four decades building one of world cinema's most recognisable signatures: deadpan working-class characters, colour-saturated interiors that feel frozen in some indeterminate post-war decade, and a studied economy of dialogue that his admirers read as poetic restraint. The Finnish director first drew serious international attention with his "Proletariat Trilogy" of the late 1980s and early 1990s, a run of films that includes the quietly bruising The Match Factory Girl, and he has sustained that reputation through a long career of festival prizes and critical goodwill. Fallen Leaves arrives as his first feature in six years, following 2017's The Other Side of Hope, and it picked up the Jury Prize at Cannes 2023. That sort of laurel tends to arrive with a great deal of expectation attached, whether a film is ready for it or not.
The film is set in a recognisably present-day Helsinki, though Kaurismäki makes no great effort to underline that modernity. The radio hums with news bulletins about the war in Ukraine, which functions as a distant, almost abstract backdrop to the immediate concerns of two people living on the economic margins. The production was handled by Finnish outfit Bufo alongside long-standing Kaurismäki collaborator Sputnik and the German co-producer Pandora Film, a lean arrangement consistent with the director's preference for modest, controlled budgets. At 81 minutes, the film is brisk by most standards, though whether that brevity reads as confidence or as thinness is very much a matter of what you bring to the screening. The screenplay is an original work, not adapted from existing source material, meaning the minimalism is entirely by design rather than a consequence of condensing something larger.
The two leads carry the weight of the film almost entirely on their own terms. Alma Pöysti, best known internationally for her award-winning turn in Tove (2020), plays Ansa, a supermarket worker whose circumstances are quietly precarious. Opposite her is Jussi Vatanen as Holappa, a construction labourer whose relationship with alcohol complicates practically everything around him. Vatanen is a respected figure in Finnish theatre and film, polished but unremarkable in a role that asks him to communicate a great deal through silence and stillness. The supporting cast, including Janne Hyytiäinen and Nuppu Koivu in smaller roles, are capable performers working within the same stripped-back register that Kaurismäki demands of everyone on screen. A stray dog also features, and, in fairness, gets some of the film's warmest moments. For those interested in how Finnish cinema handles tonal bleakness with somewhat more dramatic heft, our review of Unknown Soldier covers a very different but instructive example of what the national cinema can produce when it pushes outward rather than inward.
I must be missing the memo, because I genuinely cannot fathom why Aki Kaurismäki’s 2023 picture Fallen Leaves is being hailed as a cinematic triumph. Stripped of all the festival hype, the film feels remarkably, almost aggressively, basic.
We are introduced to two solitary souls navigating a bleak, muted Helsinki, and what follows is a narrative so stripped-down that it borders on the skeletal. The dialogue is paper-thin, the character development is practically non-existent, and the environments are as joyless as a wet Tuesday in November.
The entire premise hinges on a man (Jussi Vatanen) and a woman (Alma Pöysti) who cross paths briefly a couple of times, share exactly one thoroughly grim meal together, and then eventually bump into each other again. That is literally the extent of the dramatic arc. She happens to pilfer items from her workplace; he is, predictably, a functioning alcoholic. While I know some critics view this minimalist approach as a profound commentary on modern loneliness, I found it to be a bit of a cliche. There is nothing particularly noteworthy, romantic, interesting, or even faintly funny about watching two people exist in a state of perpetual, unvarnished melancholy.
Watching it, I couldn't help but be reminded of Winter Brothers, another film that wallows in a similar brand of unrelenting bleakness and grim subject matter. But where some films use that desolation to build a profound emotional resonance, Fallen Leaves just leaves you out in the cold. Kaurismäki is clearly aiming for a deadpan, stoic charm, but when the characters are this hollow and the interactions are this sparse, it becomes incredibly difficult to actually care about their plight. I found myself checking the clock, waiting for a spark of humanity or a genuine emotional hook that simply never materialised.
This is a film that mistakes austerity for depth. I can appreciate that the director has a distinct, established style, but when that style results in a runtime that feels like an endurance test of sheer, unadulterated dullness, it’s hard to recommend. It’s a super basic, emotionally distant exercise that offers absolutely nothing to latch onto. For a picture so universally praised, it’s a profoundly alienating experience that is just too hard to connect with.
Fallen Leaves sits squarely within a tradition of European art cinema that prizes mood and atmosphere over incident, a tradition that has its genuine masterworks but also its considerable share of films that mistake austerity for profundity. Kaurismäki's admirers will find here exactly what they have always valued in him, and they are not wrong to find it. For those less persuaded by the house style, the film's warm critical reception will likely remain something of a mystery. It is worth noting that the Cannes Jury Prize has occasionally attached itself to films that reward patience and repeat viewings, and occasionally to films that simply benefit from the right room at the right moment. Whether Fallen Leaves belongs to the first category or the second is, on the evidence here, a question that reasonable people will answer differently. The dog, at least, gives a committed performance.
Rating: ★★ | Year: 2023 | Watched: 2026-07-27
Trailer
▶ Watch the official trailer for Fallen Leaves (2023) on YouTube
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