Ah, the great amour. Most movies make falling in love feel like magic, with gorgeous, ambitious people finding romance in exotic, beautiful places. Fallen Leaves is pretty much the exact opposite of that, treating love like a cruel joke to its poor protagonists. Despite that, Fallen Leaves is in the running for one of the best romances of the year, boldly and confidently taking its strange path in hopes of finding someone to love.
Because people living in gray Helsinki suburbs are looking for romance too. Ansa (Alma Poysti) and Holappa (Jussi Vatanen) take strange routes to the karaoke bar where they lock eyes. Ansa is working a dead end job in a grocery store with her friend Liisa (Nuppu Koivu), watched like a hawk by security who thinks every employee is stealing. Holappa works a blue collar construction job with his friend Huotari (Janne Hyytiainen) who needs to belt out his song to “get discovered.” Ansa and Holappa sense a mutual attraction, but because of their friends, miss their chance…though poor small suburbs have a way of offering 2nd chances at missed connections.
And that’s Fallen Leaves’s version of magic. Weird, poor suburb magic. Writer director Aki Kaurismaki makes this particular section of Helsinki feel like the title, leaves fallen from society, drifting through life. Ambitions here are more small and grounded: singing a song at a karaoke bar, getting a decent job, getting a dog, or finding a significant other. That’s all. With all these scared people timidly approaching one another, sometimes nerves or good old bad luck get the better of them and they depart before they even get a shot at love. But as Kauismaki shows, the wait isn’t forever for that one person you locked eyes with at a bar…it might just be a few days later, or maybe a month. But time doesn’t move as quickly, and these people all have the patience to go about their days waiting for another shot. And when you finally take the plunge? For this older crowd, the dialogue is more direct and honest, getting pleasantries out of the way quickly to get to the real meat of what both parties want in the relationship.
The vast majority of Fallen Leaves’s magic is inside Alma Poysti and Jussi Vatanen. On the surface they act similar, but each does a good job individualizing the repression. Alma makes Ansa a hopeless romantic, looking for someone to take her away from the frustrations of life, but on the whole a good and decent person who’s loved by her few close friends. Jussi’s Holappa on the other hand is self-medicating with alcohol, hoping to just work in a wife to his life where they can enjoy a beer or two every night, his little fantasy land. Their little “dates” are wonderfully sweet and innocent, with each of them in a game of chicken with the other to keep silent until someone has something to say. At times, these two are in a silent movie, conveying repressed feelings without saying more than a sentence or two every few minutes. They both through body language give us the full arc of a relationship for the scared and repressed, finding a way to make the audience swoon at the buying of a 2nd dinner plate, or gasp when a piece of paper falls from a pocket.
I hope Fallen Leaves starts a romcom boon across continents everywhere. We need more working class love stories like this one, where drifters from all over find ways in and out of each others lives until a wonderful little connection turns into love. That’s wishful thinking I know, because there’s something special about this movie that no one will be able to recreate. Except a cute dog. In fact, a new pet should show up every hour in a romcom to stir the pot a little.