Ansa is a lonely woman who works as a store clerk in a supermarket in Helsinki and one day she is fired for putting an expired sandwich in her handbag. Holappa is a hard-drinking construction worker who is also lonely and down on his luck. One night the two meet their languid gazes at a karaoke bar – he goes there with a friend and doesn’t sing because he’s “a tough guy”. But it won’t be until later, when they meet again on the street when she is out of work again, that they stay to grab something and go to the cinema.
Theirs will be an unexpected love story, built on few words and high hopes, which veteran Aki Kaurismäki traces in Fallen leaves, a simple and powerful masterpiece – opening in theaters on Wednesday – about characters who seem not destined to to be together, but not resigned, in the midst of a gray existence of precariousness and injustices. Holappa is brought to life by Jussi Vatanen and Ansa is played by Alma Pöysti, who has been nominated for the Golden Globe as best actress: “The reception of the film is overwhelming”, says Riallera, in a video conference with The Vanguard.
Both had long dreamed of working with the Finnish director. “I got a call to meet at Aki’s restaurant in Helsinki and while I was there I couldn’t stop thinking about what was going to happen, because he is a legend in Finland and it was like meeting Elvis. In addition, he knew that he was thinking of retiring from the cinema and he did not want to miss the opportunity”, says the 45-year-old actor who bears a strong resemblance to James Stewart.
Alma is also a great admirer of the director of Le Havre. “The script was wonderful, almost like poetry, and you realize that everything is there. There aren’t many words, but all the situations, the characters, all the clues about them were in the text.”
“Aki has been filming for 40 years and knows exactly what he wants”, he adds. We didn’t rehearse beforehand but just went along, it was a trip to an old school cinema. He shoots in 35mm and usually does a single take. So the whole movie, almost all of it, was done in one take. In this way, those truly precious moments are achieved when something happens once and for the first time. That’s why, if you manage to do it well, it’s something special and precious.”
Jussi defines his character as “a lonely man who doesn’t have much in life. His work and his comics…, and a close relationship with alcohol. He’s proud, well, rather cocky. But what I love most about the movie and my character is that when he meets this beautiful woman at karaoke, he feels something he hasn’t felt in a long time. He has this idea that maybe life hasn’t shown him all the beauty yet. And he has to make a decision: have the courage to give up alcohol and change his life”.
Pöysti sees Ansa as “an independent woman with a difficult and sad past. He has no family, but a family chosen through his friends. And she feels proud that she does not need the support of a husband or someone to support her. She is alone, and this man will turn her life upside down.”
One of the most surprising things is that the film is set in 2024, but it seems to be happening in the fifties or sixties of the last century. Everything looks old. From the clothes of the people or the places of leisure to the house of the protagonist, who listens to the incessant news about the Russian invasion of Ukraine on an old radio. In fact, Kaurismäki confessed at the Cannes festival, where he received the jury prize: “The war made me feel that this damn world needed some love stories”.
And this is an atypical romantic story that resorts to a lot of humor for the portrait of a battered and aging working class that drinks and, of course, enjoys cinema and music. It is also a tribute to the seventh art with nods to Chaplin or Rocco and his brothers, to the sound of a Gardel tango. “People can be happy even if their faces look sad. Or you can look happy and feel very sad. Aki creates this kind of fairy tale by throwing logic out the window. Maybe the inside of the train looks old, but the outside is totally modern”, concludes Alma, who will make the move to Hollywood in 2024 with The summer book together with Glenn Close.
