About ten minutes into Kauas pilvet karkaavat<\/em> (Drifting Clouds, 1996), Lauri, the character played by K\u00e4ri V\u00e4\u00e4n\u00e4nen, discovers that the economic situation has forced the company he works for \u2014it is an urban bus company and people are more inclined to use the train or their own vehicles\u2014 to restructure, which means that four drivers are going to have to leave. How to decide who to send to the unemployment lines? The manager takes out a deck of playing cards and lets the staff choose: those who get the lowest cards are going home. Lauri gets a three of clubs.<\/p>\r\n\r\n The opening minutes of the film that some consider the first in the Losers Trilogy, filmed over a decade by Aki Kaurism\u00e4ki [Mies vailla menneisyytt\u00e4<\/em> (The Man Without a Past, 2002, awarded at Cannes) and Laitakaupungin valot<\/em> (Lights in the Dusk, 2006) would be the other two]. It is a distillation of some of the visual and thematic constants of Kaurism\u00e4ki films. But, above all, it clearly shows the particular sense of fatum present throughout his work. Aki Kaurism\u00e4ki (Orimattila, Finland, 1957) was the third of four children in a middle-class family that had lived in seven different cities before he could finish secondary school. In spite of both Aki and his elder brother, Mika, showing an early interest in film, he was rejected by the Finland Film School in 1977. He started to study Journalism at the University of Tampere while Mika studied filming in Munich. It was his elder brother who would end up involving him in audiovisual thanks to the script (which they co-wrote) of Valehtelija<\/em> (The Liar, 1981), a medium-length film starred by Aki himself. The success obtained in local Finnish circles would allow Kaurism\u00e4ki begin his career, adapting a classic such as Rikos ja rangaistus<\/em> (Crime and Punishment, 1983), a film that he insists he hates in spite of the fact that it is still very interesting today\u2013partly due to the value of the portrayal of the urban environment of Helsinki during the 1980s. Later would come a few crazy comedies (the feature-length Calamari Union<\/em> or the short Rock\u2019y VI<\/em>) before signing off on one of the most interesting works of his whole career, Varjoja paratiisissa<\/em> (Shadows in Paradise, 1986), with which he took part in the Directors\u2019 Fortnight in Cannes and the Toronto Festival. It already seemed clear that anything could come from misfortune, which usually becomes the natural enemy of Kaurism\u00e4ki\u2019s anti-heroes. Misfortune which always appears to fiercely hit the working class. \u201cI don\u2019t know bankers, nor do I want to. What dialogue would I write in a film about bankers? Something like: \u201cWhat am I going to wear to the party today?\u201d They\u2019re not powerful \u2014as we think\u2014 but slaves to money\u201d. Films by the Finnish director are inhabited by losers from a majority social class that is the victim of another one that the filmmaker does not hesitate to define as idiots. Money, affirms Kaurism\u00e4ki, \u201cis always on the side of the idiots. I make films for losers because I feel like a loser\u201d. <\/p>\r\n\r\n Victims of this misfortune, his characters fight to avoid their downfall, or at least to alleviate its effects; that is what, for example, the leading characters do in the exemplary Proletariat Trilogy \u2014besides the aforementioned Shadows in Paradise<\/em>, Ariel<\/em> (id., 1988) and Tulitikkutehtaan tytt\u00f6<\/em> (The Match Factory Girl, 1990)\u2014 for which he received notable critical acknowledgement in Europe. But as then, also in the rest of his films, Kaurism\u00e4ki lends an unmistakable natural dignity to his characters, which allows their condition to be appreciated and provokes the viewer\u2019s empathy. From the contrast between this constant and the distance with which the director deals visually with his characters \u2014whether leading actors, antagonists or secondary characters\u2014 there arises a very particular and attractive narrative and visual style. It is not unusual that he has epigones and imitators.<\/p>\r\n\r\n Two elements are of fundamental value to that distancing \u00e0 la Kaurism\u00e4ki: on the one hand, strict directing of a staple group of actors including names such as Matti Pellonp\u00e4\u00e4, Kati Outinen and Elina Salo, amongst others (\u201cthe performers are never puppets, they are flesh and blood, but I do not want them to shake their hands about all the time as if they were a windmill. The magic of film is between the camera and the actor\u2019s eyes\u201d); and on the other, expressive directing of photography by Timo Salminen, who is often unnaturally present to underline certain aspects of each story. Besides his Finnish films (the two aforementioned trilogies, for example, but also the wild comedies about the extravagant and funny Leningrad Cowboys group), Kaurism\u00e4ki\u2019s work opened naturally onto other stages in Europe during the nineties: he filmed in the United Kingdom, with Jean-Pierre L\u00e9aud in the starring role of I Hired a Contract Killer <\/em>(1990); in France: La vie de Boh\u00e8me<\/em> (The Bohemian Life, 1992) about the work of Henri Murger, and explicitly not about the Puccini opera; and in Portugal, where he spends the most of the year: the short films Bico<\/em> (2004) and O tasqueiro<\/em> (2012).<\/p>\r\n\r\n Last point. In response to misfortune, the other great key to Kaurism\u00e4ki\u2019s work is optimism. At least a certain courageous spirit that ends up taking hold of the downtrodden stars of his films, who are always ready to listen to a tango or a rock song to get the most out of each drop of life. The director says \u201cI don\u2019t want to spread my pessimism in the films\u201d, and that is how we can understand the end of his last fictional feature film to date: Le Havre (id., 2011), filmed once again in France and with the Marcel Marx (Andr\u00e9 Wilms) of La vie de Boh\u00e8me<\/em> turned into a poor great-heart shoe shiner. The urgent political content \u2014barely concealed on this occasion\u2014 does not cast a shadow over the universality of its message.<\/p>\r\n\r\n Rub\u00e9n Corral<\/strong>
\r\nProgrammer at ZINEBI<\/p>\r\n
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