In this golden age of home viewing, the Criterion Collection still provides some of the best editions of the best movies ever released, usually with a rich selection of extras and often including audio commentaries (a feature they pioneered, and perhaps the greatest gift ever to film students and cinephiles alike). This column features one Criterion release per week, based on where my interests lead me and what’s available from my local public library.
The first time I saw an Aki Kaurismäki film, my initial thought was “What is this?” followed shortly by “So what’s all the fuss about?” Everyone’s entitled to their opinions, and that includes younger versions of ourselves, but I’m glad to say I have since become a total fan both of Kaurismäki in general and of this film in particular, and I’m in good company in both regards.
Iris (Kaurismäki regular Kati Outinen) works a mind-numbingly dull job in a match factory, lives with her mother and stepfather (Elina Salo and Esko Nikkari), and spends her free time trying and miserably failing to connect with other people. She’s a bit plain but would hardly stop a clock; a bigger issue is her complete lack of self-confidence, which is not surprising when you see how her (step)parents treat her. They aren’t desperately poor but they certainly are mean, and their apartment is a singularly joyless place. Iris not only pays them rent and also does the housework, while her smallest gestures toward independence are put down with ferocity.
Iris does attract the attentions of one man, the faintly predatory Aarne (Vesa Vierikko), but it turns out he thinks she’s a prostitute. She doesn’t care, and no matter how badly he treats her, she goes on believing he’s going to become a proper human being behaving in a properly human way. The one day it all becomes too much, and, without changing her deadpan expression, Iris finds a way to make an impression on the world. You barely feel the change in her, however, so this turn seems to be part of a fable that is taking place in a world far removed from ours, where nothing is really real.
Kaurismäki sets the tone from the start, beginning The Match Factory Girl on a somewhat surreal note with a documentary-like sequence showing how wooden matches are made. It seems like something that would be more at home in a high school classroom than in a feature film, which signals that the film coming up is not your typical Saturday night at the movies fare. It also provides a nice metaphor for how Iris is treated by most of the other characters–like the mighty trees felled to be turned into tiny matchsticks, everyone sees her not as a person whose worth is intrinsic, but as an object to be exploited for their own ends.
The secret to enjoying Kaurismäki is to set aside your Hollywood-based expectations and just let it wash over you—don’t evaluate, don’t snark, don’t try to show off how sophisticated your tastes are. Settle into the film’s pace and enjoy the hypnotic effect it induces, paying attention to the ways Kaurismäki uses colors and music and images in place of dialogue. If you decide, after giving him a fair trial, that this filmmaker is just not for you, that’s OK, because he’s certainly not for everyone. But if you don’t make the effort to meet Kaurismäki on his own terms, you could be missing out on something really good, a unique approach to filmmaking that’s available to anyone willing to get out of their own way. | Sarah Boslaugh
Spine #: Eclipse Series 12: Aki Kaurismäki’s Proletariat Trilogy
Technical details: 69 min.; color; screen ratio 1.85:1; Finnish.
Edition reviewed: DVD
Extras: none
Fun Fact: The Finnish title means “Dead Leaves,” which certainly evokes the lifelessness of the characters, but the English-language title has the benefit of recalling Hans Christian Andersen’s “The Little Match Girl,” which has been giving children terrors for 180 years.
Parting Thought: I see a lot of echoes of this film in Kaurismäki’s 2023 Fallen Leaves, and his color sense comes through even more strongly in the more recent film.
