Fallen Leaves, a Finnish Romcom to Rival Notting Hill

The two unfailing leads of Fallen Leaves don’t say much, but as movie stars, they’re as effective, if not more so, than Hugh Grant and Julia Roberts. In Helsinki, Holappa (Jussi Vatanen) is a construction worker who’s depressed because he drinks too much, and the reason he drinks too much is because he’s depressed. Ansa (Alma Pöysti), a supermarket clerk, is lonely, too, and there’s a possibility they could be lonely together.

After all, on a zero-hours contract, Ansa steals outdated food from work, and microwaves it at home, where she only has enough plates and cutlery for one person. On a first date with Holappa, she visits a repertory cinema to catch Jim Jarmusch’s zombie flick The Dead Don’t Die; as Adam Driver and Bill Murray battle the undead, the pair stare in silence, barely moving a muscle. Once the credits roll, Ansa states, unironically, she’s never laughed so much in her life. “It’s another take on the romcom,” remarks Pöysti with a grin. “Aki told us, when we were shooting, this is a romcom,” recalls Vatanen. “He told us there’s one kiss on the cheek, one handshake, and one kiss on the forehead. So it’s full of passion, in his way.”

Welcome to the deadpan world of Aki Kaurismäki, a Finnish auteur whose films are small, strange, and laugh-out-loud hilarious, even if the characters often seem to be motionless and emotionless. After a lifetime of watching his films on my laptop, I found it to be a welcome surprise, if not discombobulating, to catch Fallen Leaves at a cinema amongst a big crowd who cackled throughout like it was an episode of Friends. It was only on a second viewing that I realised how much time Ansa and Holappa spend apart – their first date is halfway through the 81-minute running time, after which he loses her phone number. “Their loneliness changes after they meet,” says Pöysti. “It’s a love story. Even though they’re not in the same room, they’re still thinking about each other strongly.”

Pöysti and Vatanen are newcomers to Kaurismäki’s vast filmography, but also have vast filmographies of their own. Pöysti notably depicted Tove Jansson, the creator of Moomins, in Tove, while Vatanen is known for leading Lapland Odyssey. The pair describe growing up on Kaurismäki, who’s not only a legend in Finland but in world cinema in general. With stone-cold classics such as Drifting Clouds, The Man Without a Past, and La vie de bohème, the esoteric filmmaker would be more famous than Jim Jarmusch if his movies were in English, not Finnish. In fact, Jarmusch credits Kaurismäki as a major influence, and even cameos in Leningrad Cowboys Go America.

Kaurismäki, then, possesses a recognisable style, partly because he writes all his scripts, always uses Timo Salminen as his cinematographer, and has his own quirks on the set. For instance, he’s closer to Clint Eastwood than David Fincher in that he usually only allows the actors a single take before moving on. “If something goes wrong, we have a second take,” says Vatanen. “But he wants to capture the moment when things are said for the time.” “There’s a quality you get from that one take,” says Pöysti. “Another thing that didn’t make it easier was that he asked us not to rehearse. The rehearsal we did before the shoot was just finding the rhythm in the most minimalistic way, without acting it.” “He does long takes, and doesn’t edit a lot,” says Vatanen. “He wants that rhythm in that long take to be the exact rhythm. It’s very meaningful what happens in the frame.”

In terms of chronology, Fallen Leaves is the fourth film in what Kaurismäki originally called his “Proletariat Trilogy”, which comprised Shadows in Paradise, Ariel, and, my personal favourite, The Match Factory Girl. Released in 1990, The Match Factory Girl included references to the Tiananmen Square protests on TV footage in the background. In Fallen Leaves, radio reports remind viewers of the atrocities in Ukraine. “Aki said he couldn’t have made a film without commenting on the war,” says Pöysti. “He realised that putting Tiananmen Square in The Match Factory Girl was like a time capsule, and when someone watches this film in the future, they’ll know what happened. He wants us to remember.”

I’m speaking to Pöysti and Vatanen in Corinthia Hotel during the London Film Festival, the morning after they did an intro to around 2,000 people at the Royal Festival Hall. Famously press-shy, Kaurismäki didn’t attend, and at Cannes he also declined all interview requests. In the director’s past interviews, journalists have noted how much he smokes and drinks in front of them; he’s also claimed to drink while directing.

As for whether Kaurismäki would drink while directing Fallen Leaves, the actors decline to comment on the subject. Both agree, though, that it depicts alcohol in a new light. In his previous films – pretty much all of them – wine and whiskey keep the characters going, and are consumed like Popeye downing spinach. In Fallen Leaves, Ansa, who’s had alcoholics in her family, threatens Holappa with an ultimatum: it’s her or the booze. “It’s a problem in Finland,” says Vatanen. “People are drinking too much.” “It goes back generations,” says Pöysti. “We’ve been self-medicating on alcohol in our country for a long time. It’s been a comfort of solitude, and a way to get out of shyness. The bottle has served many a purpose in our history.”

Kaurismäki has also claimed that, in Finland, everyone is miserable from the lack of vitamin D, which is then reflected in his films. Is that true? “We actually have a word for that, in the winter, when the sun doesn’t come out,” says Pöysti. “It’s called kaamos-depression, which is a real thing some people get from the lack of light. And then, in summer, people might get hysterical because there’s so much light and the sun doesn’t set. The Finns are very different people if you meet them in summer.” “Everyone’s eating vitamin D in the winter,” says Vatanen. “We don’t get it from the sun, because we don’t have it.”

As for their favourite Kaurismäki film, Pöysti picks Le Havre (“that’s also a film about compassion and taking care of each other”), while Vatanen opts for La vie de bohème (“the most beautiful film ever”), which, like Fallen Leaves, ends with a shot of a dog walking away. Rumour has it that Pöysti and Vatanen will star in Kaurismäki’s next film, but, for now, the actors refuse to give anything away. “No idea,” says Pöysti. “The man is a mystery. We’ll see.”

Fallen Leaves is out in UK cinemas now.