FALLEN LEAVES - Mark Reviews Movies

Fallen Leaves, MUBI

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Review by Mark Dujsik | November 30, 2023

Things are bad enough for people and in the world. The sweetly off-kilter Fallen Leaves clearly wants to counter that idea—as much as such a thing is possible.

The story of writer/director Ari Kurismäki's film is about as simple as can be. It's about two people, a woman and a man, who meet by chance and fall for each other with such ease that it could be as sad as it might be endearing. Maybe these two are meant for each other, but it's also possible they simply have no other options.

After all, Helsinki residents Ansa (Alma Pöysti) and Holappa (Jussi Vatanen)—his surname, as his first name is never revealed and isn't necessary—are about as lonely as two people could be. She works at a grocery store, where she is underpaid, and takes just-expired food home for dinner, where she sits and listens to awful news coming from the invasion of Ukraine. Sometimes, she puts on music to pass the time, or Ansa just turns off the radio, because it's just too much.

His life isn't much better. He works at a factory, where he actually takes cigarette breaks—certain that his death will come from industrial fumes before anything else to do with smoking—and sneaks chugs of booze from a hidden bottle. Holappa's a functioning alcoholic, basically, and all his life amounts to just that: basically functioning.

The two meet briefly at a karaoke bar, where a friend has dragged each of them one night. After they're both fired, they later meet again outside a local bar, where Holappa's about to have some morning drinks and Ansa has just watched her new boss, the bar's owner, be arrested by the cops for selling hashish. He invites her to coffee and, then, a movie. She gives him her phone number, which he proceeds to lose immediately after she starts walking home.

All of this would seem like the formulaic stuff of a romantic comedy, and on a plot level, it certainly is (There are other complications, as realistic as Ansa's disapproval of a stubborn Holappa's drinking and as absurd as a trolley-induced coma). Kurismäki, though, is more concerned with the tone of the material, which plays the melancholy and the comedy of the material with an equal degree of nonchalance, and the bittersweet nature of falling in love against so much personal and international angst.

The fact that every character—from the two leads to Holappa's insecure-with-a-brave-face friend Huotari (Janne Hyytiäinen)—seems perpetually bored, save for a few little pleasures, is both the point and quite a bit understandable. Apart from some contemporary touches (news of specific wars and the odd first-date movie selection), the setting of Fallen Leaves feels almost timeless, and what does that say about the state of us, the world, and our relationships with it and each other? In the face of such bitterness, we must cling to the sweetness when, where, and with whom we can.

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