Hope dies last. This is one of the most famous mantras of cinema – a mantra of its stories, especially in those that came out during the Golden Age of Hollywood, a manta of those who, despite all of the despair that they might feel towards the bigger picture, insist to hope that art will triumph in front of commercialized detritus, and its triumph will be one of humanism, rather than cynicism. And the miracle did, indeed, happen this year at Cannes, in a year of mammoth-sized films, with Aki Kaurismäki’s newest offering – a small, discreet film (clocking in at just 80 minutes), that contains within it more life than many of the other films in the competition, altogether –, which was justly awarded the Jury Grand Prix.

The film’s leading premise – which seemingly reprises the thread of his famous Proletariat Trilogy (1986-1990): Shadows in Paradise, Ariel, and The Match Factory Girl; the first and latter have a decisive influence on this new work – is deceptively simple. On the one hand, we have the life of Ansa (Alma Pöysti), a woman who loses her job in a supermarket after she pockets a sandwich that she should have thrown in the bin of expired products. On the other hand, we have Holappa (Jussi Vatanen), a young mechanic with a serious drinking problem. And life will find its way to bring together these two silent blue-collar workers, burdened with a sensation of resignation (even, depression) and of profound alienation towards their work.

Kaurismäki has always been an auteur of precision – one that is both formal and thematic. In what concerns the first it must be said that the Finnish director seems to construct all of his shots by starting from the usage of light: how it allows him to play with shadows (and few contemporary directors are so adept at wielding the technique of chiaroscuro), or how the color of the light influences the overall chromatics of the image: from the piercing, sterilizing whites of industrial interiors or that of street lights, to the warmth of the sun and of the tungsten bulbs that shine within apartments –, resulting in images that have a timeless allure despite their profoundly contemporary contents. But let’s not talk about him as if he were a painter – another crucial aspect is the way Kaurismäki considers the lengths of his shots (especially since very few of his films clock in at over an hour and a half), thus guiding the unfolding of this story about two small destinies, following them with a steadfast gaze that often imitates our immanent way of looking at life, glimpsing at both the mundane and the transcendental alike.

What sheer beauty lies in the way that seemingly marginal details end up weaving together in this film, their lines coming together to trace an entire landscape: how the contents of a pocket of a shabby leather jacket and the sidewalk in front of a cinema are inexorably drawn to one another, how the faraway-yet-so-close atrocity of the invasion of Ukraine (few films released in the last year are more categorical in condemning it) translates into an inexhaustible will to live, how the love of cinema (from Jarmusch to Visconti, from McCarey to Bresson) becomes the unconditional, unreserved love of one’s fellow man. Fallen Leaves is a humanist manifesto – a balm that heals the endless exploitation and ennui of modernity, mends the anguishing uncertainty of love in a world like ours, and cures the often uncritical, depoliticizing nostalgia of our age.

Flavia Dima

Film critic & journalist. Collaborates with local and international outlets, programs a short film festival - BIEFF, does occasional moderating gigs and is working on a PhD thesis about home movies. At Films in Frame, she writes the monthly editorial - The State of Cinema and is the magazine's main festival reporter.