La vie de Bohème. Aki Kaurismäki. 1992. ⚃

[fifteen minutes pass]

This is, I guess, Kaurismäki’s victory lap: He made the Leningrad Cowboys movie, which was a popular favourite with anybody who was drunk in Europe at the time, and The Matchstick Factory Girl, which established him as a serious filmmaker, making everybody mount Kaurismäki film festivals, showing all his previous movies.

So what now?

A couple of movies ago, Kaurismäki took all his friends to the US and made a movie there… and this time, he’s gone to Paris to do the same?

I don’t speak French, so I’m not sure how convincing some of these people’s French is (probably not a lot; some of it sounds distinctly non-French)… or is it all dubbed in? Or some of it? It looks like some of them are speaking French-ish and some are totally dubbed?

SUCH MYSTERY.

Anyway, it’s really quite amusing so far. I hope the trajectory is better on this movie than some of Kaurismäki’s previous ones (like Kalamari Union) where the premise was sound, but then it all kind of… lost steam along the way.

[ten minutes pass]

GAH! THE AWFUL ROCKABILLY MUSIC! THE HORROR!

Even in Paris?

Dude.

[at least half an hour passes]

Most of Kaurismäki’s movies until now has been very short — 70-90 minutes. Is this his (so far) longest movie? And I think it suffers from being too long. I’m enjoying every scene, but at the one hour mark, I’m just kinda … wishing it would be over, already.

[two minutes pass]

I changed my mind! I love this movie.

[the end]

OK, so it’s… uneven? I do love this movie, but there’s a bunch of scenes I’m not that fond of. And, again, it lost some steam towards the end. It’s got an ending that feels somewhere between a cop-up and a parody of an ending… it’s probably meant to be funny, but it’s like eh

Valimo. Aki Kaurismäki. 2007. ⚂

Well, this short is basically just a joke: That foundry workers would watch a Lumiere short? Or something?

But it looks pretty good.

Tulitikkutehtaan tyttö. Aki Kaurismäki. 1990. ⚄

OK, here we go. After I don’t know how many movies: Here’s Kaurismäki’s breakthrough movie, that in retrospect made all his previous movies seem better. (After this movie, an eight-movie Kaurismäki er festival? was mounted in New York.) And I think I saw this at the Cinematheque back then!

[rolls movie]

[twenty minute-ish pass ok it’s a lot longer but that’s how far the movie progressed]

So I started this move and then switched to something else because of reasons, and then I learned that Ruth Bader Ginsburg is dead so now I’m back watching this movie. Who’s going to be the next supreme? Stephen Miller?

*sigh*

So I’m now a lot more depressed than when I started watching this movie, and now every single scene seems filled with depressing dread, as they should be.

[the end]

All of Kaurismäki’s strength and weaknesses are in this movie: But to the nth degree. Kaurismäki’s loathsome taste in music is even worse here than normally, making many scenes unbearable, and his staid actors are better here than ever before, making many scenes scintillating.

But it’s a really good, unique movie, deserving all the plaudits and general excitement that it received at the time.