Fallen Leaves

Aki Kaurismäki, Finland/Germany

JORDAN CRONK

At 81 minutes, Aki Kaurismäki’s Fallen Leaves was the shortest film in a bloated Cannes competition. It was also among the best, accomplishing more with less (and in less time) than any number of overwrought productions, a notion evidently shared by at least some members of Ruben Östlund’s jury, which awarded the film its namesake third runner-up prize, making this only the second honour Kaurismäki’s received from Cannes after winning the Grand Prix for The Man Without a Past in 2002. Billed as a belated fourth entry in the 66-year-old Finnish director’s “Proletariat Trilogy,” Fallen Leaves does re-engage the working-class woe and bittersweet ennui of Shadows in Paradise (1986), Ariel (1988), and The Match Factory Girl (1990), but it otherwise operates in just about every conceivable way as any Kaurismäki…

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Cinema Scope (Digital) - 1 Issue, Issue 95 - Summer 2023

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