Formerly Known As Cinema

Image courtesy of MUBI

Aki Kaurismaki’s charming and pitch-perfect “Fallen Leaves” is the best romantic comedy of the year. It’s also the best zombie movie.

Though there aren’t any actual undead lurching around, the citizens of Helsinki (where the film takes place) tend to gather at local pubs and stare in a zombielike fashion, mute and blank-eyed, into the middle distance while guzzling tall pints of beer and smoking countless cigarettes.

And in the streets, on the train or even while watching a concert, people seem frozen in place like shut down robots waiting for activation, afraid to commit to the idea of enjoyment, lest their hopes become kindled, which in this world can only lead to disappointment.

Dialogue, if it happens at all, comes in short bursts of dryly hilarious repartee, like a series of New Yorker cartoons come to life.

The first conversation we get, which takes place in front of a huge “No Smoking” sign, occurs between the cigarette-smoking Holappa (Jussi Vatanen) and his co-worker, Huotari (Janne Hyytiainen), and is delivered in the most parched deadpan possible:

HUOTARI: (re: cigarette) That will be the death of you.
HOLAPPA: No, The black lung will get me first.
HUOTARI: I see. You know best. (He puts a pinch of tobacco in his mouth.)
HOLAPPA: The number of vices is constant, for instance, you are a babbler.
HUOTARI: I’ll think about that at your grave.
HOLAPPA: A sympathy card will do.
HUOTARI: That costs.

The tone would be hard to take if it weren’t for the tiniest glimmer of impish playfulness the performers bring, a gentle drollness that speaks of years of friendship and mutual deep affection, which could never be overtly expressed.

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It’s hard to imagine a love story thriving in this sere environment. But from the moment the lanky and handsome Holappa meets the radiant and sweet Ansa (the entrancing Alma Poysti) at a crowded Kareoke bar, the engine of heartache starts to purr.

And these two lonely people begin a slow and lovely dance of mutual attraction that director Kaurismaki constantly derails by throwing everything but the kitchen sink into their path of happiness.

Holappa is a charming reprobate and serious alcoholic whose day-drinking has cost him multiple jobs. Ansa’s a big-hearted pragmatist who won’t sacrifice her ascetic yet manageable life even for a chance at happiness. (In an early scene, after opening an electric bill, Ansa immediately goes around her tiny apartment unplugging appliances, finally turning off the breakers altogether).

The original Finnish title of the film translates as “Dead Leaves,” which is probably more apt (if less marketable), since death, or deadness, is clearly at the center of the plot.

And there’s definitely some wry nods toward the zombie movie genre. Nothing so overt as to tip the story into horror, but enough for us to grasp Kaurismaki’s apparent theme that only true love can bring the “dead” back to life.

The first image in the film, for example, is an unsettling close-up of huge chunks of some unrecognizable plastic-wrapped ‘meat’ being scanned in a grocery store.

Then, when Ansa asks Holappa to pick a movie for them to see, he chooses “The Dead Don’t Die,” Jim Jarmusch’s 2019 zombie comedy.

Image courtesy of MUBI

Later the Finnish band Maustetytot performs a hilariously blank-faced version of their song “I Was Born into Sadness and Dressed with Disappointment” with the lyrics: “I don’t know if I can make it to my grave... Just dig me deeper into the ground.”

And finally, when Holappa lands in the hospital Anya reads the front cover headline from a magazine out loud: “He ate his girlfriend. He was caught when the chopped-up body was found in his freezer.”

But all this plays as cheeky background to the main story where, along with the somnambulistic extras, and the overall dearth of emotion from the leads, a slightly unreal, fable-like quality emerges. A magical kind of alternate universe where, as in Sleeping Beauty, the gentlest of kisses might actually raise the dead.

There are parts of “Fallen Leaves” that are as ardently romantic as Vincente Minelli’s 1945 weeper, “The Clock,” with two hopelessly destined lovers searching in vain for each other.

At other times, we might almost be in a David Lynch film, where a sullen lipsticked bartender smokes a cigarette as if the world is coming to an end while Olavi Virta’s perky rendition of “Mambo Italiano” plays incongruously on the jukebox.

Image courtesy of MUBI

But Kaurismaki’s tone is ultimately all his own. And after twenty films, many of them classics, he’s found a way to bring his delightful message of “hope plucked from the ashes of despair” in a concise, brilliantly rendered fashion.

Though there’s not a lot of dialogue in “Fallen Leaves,” (those allergic to subtitles needn’t worry that their reading skills will be tested), nearly every single line delivers an addictive mix of valiant heartbreak and genuine mirth.

It’s the kind of film you want to hug close. Not only for the message of redemption and fulfillment at its core, but for the supremely subtle and non-manipulative manner in which the story is delivered.

See it with someone you love.

IN THEATERS

An LA-based playwright, JUSTIN TANNER has more than twenty produced plays to his credit, including Voice Lessons, Day Drinkers, Space Therapy, Wife Swappers, and Coyote Woman. His Pot Mom received the PEN-West Award for Best Play.

He has written for the TV shows Gilmore Girls, My So-Called Life and the short-lived Love Monkey. He wrote, directed and edited 88 episodes of the web series Ave 43, available on YouTube.

Tanner is the current Playwright in Residence for the Rogue Machine Theatre in Hollywood, where his most recent play Little Theatre, of December of 2022, was met with rave reviews. Charles McNulty of the LA Times writes, "Engrossing... a comedy à clef... “Little Theatre” is invaluable.'"