From its brilliant cinematography to its compassionate characters, Lights in the Dusk is another successful exercise in deadpan minimalist comedy from Aki Kaurismäki.
From its brilliant cinematography to its compassionate characters, Lights in the Dusk is another successful exercise in deadpan minimalist comedy from Aki Kaurismäki.
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A lonely night watchman finds love but comes to regret it in this offbeat comedy from Finnish director Aki Kaurismaki. Koistinen (Janne Hyytiainen) works as a security guard at a shopping mall in Helsinki, where he keeps an eye on the place after hours. Koistinen is a quiet nebbish who doesn't have much luck with women, and the closest thing he has to a girlfriend is Aila (Maria Heiskanen), a woman who runs a sausage cart Koistinen frequents after work, though he doesn't realize she carries a
torch for him. Koistinen is killing time in a shabby café when he meets Mirja (Maria Jarvenhelmi), a beautiful blonde who appears to be interested in him. Koistinen is immediately smitten and is willing to marry her even before they have their first date, but what he doesn't know is Mirja's interest in him is not sincere -- she's working with Lindholm (Ilkka Koivula), a career criminal who has hired her to get some security codes from Koistinen so they can stage a heist at the mall where he works. However, even after Koiskinen is betrayed by Mirja and becomes the leading suspect in the robbery, he still loves her and can't bring himself to tell the police what he's learned about her. Laitakaupungin Valot (aka Lights In The Dusk) received its world premiere at the 2006 Cannes Film Festival. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi
Kaurismaki creates some beautiful frames, carefully composing his affectless characters against the rooms' colors, but there's something wrong with your story when people are upstaged by the decor.
The distance Kaurismki creates belies his deeply humanistic streak. He engages characters in the direst of situations not to see them suffer but to search for hope.
So stylized and slow-moving (even at a spare 75 minutes) that you may have trouble adapting to its hypnotic rhythms -- but if you can, there are sumptuous visual rewards to be found, plus the faintest emotional uptick right at the end.
Un relato crudo, probablemente desconcertante y extrañamente tragicómico, sólo para seguidores incondicionales del director, que repite su estilo sin sorpresas.
Kaurismäki's spare style and economical storytelling are well-suited to this particular story about loneliness, as the director never muddies the frame with sentimental dross or lugubrious inclinations.
Kaurismäki is self-consciously tapping into the raw pathos of an earlier time in cinema (the pain and loss that often accompanied Charles Chaplin's Little Tramp, for example). The idea works, though it is finally wearing.
Aki Kaurismaki's gloomy take on film noir... is pure Kaurismaki, done in the director's inimitable deadpan and surreally dispassionate style and grim sensibility.
So dry it's parched, this study of a passive loser whose life just keeps getting worse is basically a series of noir cliches clothed in arthouse anomie.
Lights In The Dusk plays out in the expected Kaurismäki style, with flavorful musical interludes, great affection for the city's outcasts, and lots of bleakness chased by the faintest sliver of hope.
Regret, loneliness, stubbornness..it's a wonder we all carry on. It's a wonder that Aki Kaurismäki caries on to be honest, as after watching the film I watched an interview with him that was a DVD extra and it sounds like every film he makes now is a real effort and he's totally lost his passion. Unfortunately it does
show somewhat in Lights in the Dusk. Don't get me wrong though, it's a good film and easily one of his best looking films; never has a director made the ordinary look so colourful. This just isn't him at his best and I can only await Le Havre with nervous anticipation.
An ironic, existential portrait of loneliness. From the start, Koistinen is painfully out of sync with his environment and ostracized by almost every person he encounters. The tight, lingering frame compositions, remarkably open and suggestive, emphasize this discordant, askew vision. Amidst this bleakness, hope
triumphs in the final, life-affirming shot. A positive end to Kaurismaki's Loser Trilogy.
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