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Fallen Leaves (film)

Fallen Leaves (Finnish: Kuolleet lehdet, lit. 'Dead Leaves') is a 2023 romantic comedy-drama film written and directed by Aki Kaurismäki. It is Kaurismäki's 20th full-length film and a continuation of his Proletariat series, which was originally planned as a trilogy and already includes Shadows in Paradise (1986), Ariel (1988), and The Match Factory Girl (1990). Alma Pöysti and Jussi Vatanen star in the main roles. The film is produced by Sputnik and Bufo.

The film premiered on 22 May 2023 at the 76th Cannes Film Festival, and was selected to compete for the Palme d'Or in its main competition section, where it won the Jury Prize. It was released in Finland on 15 September 2023. It received critical acclaim and was named one of the top five international films of 2023 by the National Board of Review. The film was chosen as the Finnish entry for Best International Feature Film at the 96th Academy Awards, and was one of the 15 finalist films in the December shortlist.

Plot

Ansa is a single woman who lives in Helsinki. She works on a zero-hour contract in a supermarket, stocking the shelves. The equally lonely and depressed Holappa works as a sandblaster and frequently drinks on the job. One night, co-worker and roommate Huotari proposes they go to a karaoke bar, and he reluctantly complies. There, the two drink heavily and Huotari sings for the audience. His singing gets complimented by Liisa, who is drinking with her friend and co-worker Ansa. While Huotari tries (and fails) to seduce Liisa, Holappa and Ansa notice each other, but do not talk. Later, while returning home, Ansa sees Holappa drunk and unconscious on a bench. After checking that he is okay, she leaves before he wakes up.

Ansa eventually gets fired for taking expired food from the supermarket. In desperate need of money, she starts working at a bar for a meager salary. On her second day on the job, her boss is arrested, and she is jobless once again, but runs into Holappa who buys her a coffee and a pastry. They later see The Dead Don't Die at the cinema and seem to hit it off. At the end of the date, she writes down her phone number for Holappa, but does not tell him her name. While stopping to smoke a cigarette, he unknowingly drops and loses the paper.

Ansa grows disappointed waiting for a phone call while Holappa has no way of tracking her down. Remembering that Ansa told him that she lives near the cinema, he repeatedly goes there and waits at the entrance for hours. He eventually sustains an injury at work, and is fired after failing a breathalyzer test, which also gets him kicked out of the company dormitory. Ansa and Holappa eventually reunite outside the movie theater one night, and Ansa invites him over for dinner. Everything seems to go well, until she catches him drinking from a flask in her flat. Because of the tragedies alcoholism has caused to her family, an angry Ansa throws Holappa out. Without a home, he sleeps on benches at night and gets a job in construction but is again fired for drinking at work.

One day, while returning from work, Ansa saves a homeless dog by adopting it. At home, she washes the dog and treats it with affection. Missing Ansa (who also misses him), Holappa finds housing and pours his bottles down the drain. He calls Ansa to apologize, and they agree to meet up right away. On his way to her house, however, he is struck by a train.

Ansa waits for him at home, not knowing what happened. One day at a park, while walking the dog, Ansa runs into Huotari who reveals that Holappa is in a coma. Huotari also asks for Liisa's number, despite knowing she thinks he is too old for her. Ansa gives him the number and goes to the hospital. Though she does not know Holappa's first name, Ansa convinces the staff to let her see him. Each day while Holappa is in a coma, she reads and talks to him. Huotari, on the other hand, starts a relationship with Liisa.

One day, Holappa wakes up and leaves the hospital with Ansa and her dog. Instead of asking Ansa for her name, Holappa asks what the dog is called. She answers "Chaplin".

Cast

Production

Fallen Leaves was produced by Sputnik Oy and Bufo, and co-produced by the German company Pandora Film. The production also received the support of the Finnish Film Foundation, Yle, the Finnish Broadcasting Company, ZDF / ARTE, ARTE G.E.I.E, Filmförderungsanstalt and Film-und Medienstiftung NRW.

Filming began in August 2022 in Kallio, Helsinki. Timo Salminen served as director of photography. Production was done "in one take" and in Kaurismäki's typical style, according to Pöysti: "don't rehearse and don't read the script too much".

The time period of the film is unclear, and it has been said to be set in an alternate reality. The wall calendar shown in the film shows autumn 2024, but the news narrated on the radio takes place in the early moments of the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine. Tube radios, landline phones and old-fashioned trains are used in the world of the film, among other things. It also contains several references to films, including Jim Jarmusch's The Dead Don't Die, David Lean's Brief Encounter, and Charlie Chaplin's Limelight. According to Alma Pöysti, the female lead, "the film is about lonely people with baggage, who meet later in life. It takes courage to fall in love later in life." It has been described as a tragicomedy.

Release

Fallen Leaves was selected to compete for the Palme d'Or at the 2023 Cannes Film Festival, where it had its world premiere on 22 May 2023. International sales are handled by The Match Factory. In May 2023, MUBI acquired the distribution rights for North America, UK, Ireland, Latin America and Turkey. In the United States, the film was released on 17 November.

The film was screened at the Midnight Sun Film Festival on 17 June 2023. It was also invited to the 27th Lima Film Festival in the Acclaimed section, where it was screened on 10 August 2023. Following screenings at the 2023 Toronto International Film Festival and 2023 New York Film Festival.

It was released in Germany by Pandora Film on 14 September 2023, under the title Fallende Blätter. B-Plan Distribution theatrically released the film in Finland on 15 September 2023.

It was also invited at the 28th Busan International Film Festival in 'Icon' section and was screened on 6 October 2023.

Reception

Critical response

On Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of 98% based on 162 reviews, with an average rating of 8.3/10. The website's critics consensus reads, "A quirky tale of star-crossed lovers, Fallen Leaves is a life-affirming gem from Finnish filmmaker Kaurismäki." On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 86 out of 100, based on 30 critic reviews, indicating "universal acclaim".

Reviewing the film following its Cannes premiere, Peter Bradshaw of The Guardian wrote that the film is "romantic and sweet-natured, in a deadpan style that in no way undermines or ironises the emotions involved and with some sharp things to say about contemporary politics." Glenn Kenny of RogerEbert.com gave the film four out of four stars, stating that "just an hour and twenty minutes long, the movie is a soulful romance that goes through conventional narrative paces." Time called the film a "quiet masterpiece" and possibly Kaurismäki's greatest film.

American filmmaker Dean Fleischer Camp praised the film, saying "Kaurismäki tells sincere stories about marginalized peoples struggling for the basic stuff—food, shelter, dignity, love. But the films themselves are bone-dry comedies which encourage us to laugh at the protagonists' misfortunes, or at least at the absurdity of the world's indifference to them. And by depicting such sympathetic underdogs with such a coolly detached brush, Kaurismäki evokes in us, the audience, our very best. When the lights come up, I feel radicalized toward empathy and sincerity, ready to take up arms against the cynicism within myself and against the ironic posturing that is pop culture's favorite self-defensive crouch."

In August 2023, it was voted as the Best Film of the Year by the International Film Critics Federation Fipresci.

Fallen Leaves was ranked first on Time's top 10 best films of 2023 list, and fifth on Cahiers du Cinéma's top 10 films of 2023 list. The film was included in the National Board of Review's list of the Top Five International Films of 2023. AP News listed the film among the best films of the year; of the two critics who responded to the list, Lindsey Bahr ranked the film at #6 and Jake Coyle at #1.