Summary

Fallen Leaves is a deadpan romantic comedy that explores the possibility of human connection in a challenging world that encourages emotional detachment. The film’s stars, Alma Pöysti and Jussi Vatanen, deliver subtle performances that leave a big impression and highlight the difficulty of their characters’ daily lives. The movie’s larger message emphasizes the importance of real interaction and the limitations of art as a substitute, while also acknowledging the value of cinema as a means to connect with others.

Encountering an established auteur filmmaker for the first time is one of my favorite moviegoing experiences. Their early work might hold the seeds of their personal style, but jumping into a career well underway means seeing it in full bloom, like stumbling into a new world and having to learn its rules and rhythms from scratch. Fallen Leaves (Kuolleet lehdet) is my first Aki Kaurismäki film, but his 20th. From what I’ve read, what I experienced as new is very much of a piece with the Finnish writer-director’s previous work.

I can assure anyone similarly uninitiated that this makes a wonderful starting point, and not just because it’s a great movie in itself. It’s a romantic comedy so deadpan that, at first, you might wonder whether human connection is even possible at this level of expressivity. This is, of course, the point, and if genuine relationships still seem like miracles when the 81-minute runtime is up, they also feel more vital than ever. It’s such an effective, layered deployment of this approach to filmmaking that I finished it excited to have 19 others like it left to see.

Fallen Leaves’ Stars Make Subtle Choices That Leave A Big Impression
Jussi Vatanen and Alma Pöysti in Fallen Leaves

Set in present-day Helsinki, Fallen Leaves follows two lonely people about to cross paths: Ansa (Alma Pöysti), a grocery store worker conscious of her home’s unfilled spaces; and Holappa (Jussi Vatanen), a metalworker who sneaks a drink whenever he’s able. Their emotional withdrawal is at odds with their colorful, art- and music-filled environment, but not their peers, who are at most a half-step above them. If their friends, Liisa (Nuppu Koivu) and Huotari (Janne Hyytiäinen), are as desperate for companionship, they at least do something about it — even if their amusing exchange at the local karaoke bar doesn’t go well.

That is where Ansa and Holappa first glimpse each other, but it won’t be until another chance encounter that they actually interact. We’ve gotten to see the challenges of their daily lives by then, and learned that this world (and their bosses) isn’t always good to them. Anytime someone turns on a radio, hoping for a little escapism, they’re greeted with the latest updates on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Perhaps, Kaurismäki’s movie suggests, disaffection is a valid response to this reality we live in. So, when these two people meet and sparks fly, it becomes all the more meaningful.

The value of cinema is not in connecting with the filmmaker’s point of view, but as a means to connect with each other.

One consequence of Fallen Leaves’ performance style is that we become extra sensitive to change in the actors, and the subtlest of smirks during the protagonists’ first date had me grinning ear-to-ear. Vatanen, whose character is almost always some level of drunk, gets the short end of the stick as the film’s most subdued presence, but Pöysti really shines in contrast. A gentle optimism ebbs and flows in her, deflated by hardship and reignited by moments of connection. The hope Ansa has for Holappa beams through in her eyes whenever she looks at him, and it’s infectious.

Watching Kaurismäki’s Movie Can Only Get You So Far
Jussi Vatanen in Fallen Leaves

As is the nature of these stories, just as the universe brought them together, events (some touchingly dramatic, others comically coincidental) conspire to keep them apart. But throughout this turbulence, we cling to the hope it’ll all work out for them. This is how Kaurismäki’s larger message really sinks in. His film is filled with art of all kinds, representing, as Huotari’s karaoke performance illustrates, the human desire to share ourselves with others. The characters are surrounded by it, but still, they are blanks; art is no substitute for real interaction.

There’s an acknowledgment of this movie’s limitations nestled in that theme, but Fallen Leaves has an answer for that. Ansa and Holappa go to the movies together in one scene — to see, in a wink to another deadpan comedy about disaffection, Jim Jarmusch’s The Dead Don’t Die — and two patrons exit the theater discussing their experiences with it. The lines themselves may play as jokes, but the fact remains that this is one of the few instances of non-primary characters actually talking to each other. The central couple then fill a first-date silence by doing the same.

Alma Pöysti and Jussi Vatanen in Fallen Leaves

The value of cinema is not in connecting with the filmmaker’s point of view, but as a means to connect with each other. Here the movie’s perspective on technology starts to make sense. Devices that ask us to take our eyes off our fellow humans are conspicuously absent. Radios are very prominent, but TVs are nowhere to be seen, and the rare appearance of a cellphone is only to make calls. When Ansa needs a computer, she is overcharged for 30 minutes of use at a local café, as if the film is taxing her.

The irony of reviewing Fallen Leaves for its streaming release is not lost on me, so I’ll do my part by recommending that you not only watch it, but find a way to share however it made you feel with another living, breathing person. Barring that, a certain third-act development makes me think talking out loud to a pet about it would be considered an acceptable alternative.

Fallen Leaves released in limited US theaters on November 17, and is available to stream on MUBI from Friday, January 19. The film is 81 minutes long and is not currently rated.