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Lights in the Dusk (Laitakaupungin valot) (2006)

tomatometer

68

Average Rating: 6.3/10
Reviews Counted: 40
Fresh: 27 | Rotten: 13

From its brilliant cinematography to its compassionate characters, Lights in the Dusk is another successful exercise in deadpan minimalist comedy from Aki Kaurismäki.

50

Average Rating: 5.5/10
Critic Reviews: 12
Fresh: 6 | Rotten: 6

From its brilliant cinematography to its compassionate characters, Lights in the Dusk is another successful exercise in deadpan minimalist comedy from Aki Kaurismäki.

audience

69

liked it
Average Rating: 3.6/5
User Ratings: 4,249

My Rating

Movie Info

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

Unrated, 1 hr. 18 min.

Art House & International, Drama

Aki Kaurismäki

Oct 16, 2007

Strand Releasing

All Critics (41) | Top Critics (12) | Fresh (29) | Rotten (13) | DVD (4)

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.

October 16, 2007 Full Review Source: Chicago Reader | Comment
Chicago Reader
Top Critic IconTop Critic

It's a deceptively satisfying, almost magical achievement, like being stranded in a desert yet never going thirsty.

September 21, 2007 Full Review Source: Boston Globe | Comment
Boston Globe
Top Critic IconTop Critic

The director's existential sarcasm is muted here.

July 23, 2007 Full Review Source: Chicago Sun-Times | Comment
Chicago Sun-Times
Top Critic IconTop Critic

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.

July 12, 2007 Full Review Source: Los Angeles Times | Comment
Los Angeles Times
Top Critic IconTop Critic

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.

June 14, 2007 Full Review Source: Salon.com | Comment
Salon.com
Top Critic IconTop Critic

There's great music, an excellent dog, and that indescribable Kaurismäki tension between misery and a cosmic joke.

June 13, 2007 Full Review Source: Entertainment Weekly | Comment
Entertainment Weekly
Top Critic IconTop Critic

Though it's the weakest of the three panels that form Kaurismaki's trilogy, which began with Drifting Clouds in 1996, it's still worth seeing.

June 3, 2011 Full Review Source: EmanuelLevy.Com | Comment

Un relato crudo, probablemente desconcertante y extrañamente tragicómico, sólo para seguidores incondicionales del director, que repite su estilo sin sorpresas.

January 22, 2008 Full Review Source: Uruguay Total | Comment
Uruguay Total

Another in a series of Kaurismaki's deeply touching portraits of ordinary people, full of gentle and mournfully poetic subtle narrative rhythms.

October 7, 2007 Full Review | Comment
Long Island Press

in interview, Kaurismaki wields an even more minimalist variant on the kind of deadpan humour for which his films are so famous.

September 17, 2007 Full Review Source: Eye for Film | Comment
Eye for Film

A wholly satisfying comic-existential bit of fluff.

September 12, 2007 Full Review Source: Antagony & Ecstasy | Comment
Antagony & Ecstasy

It's exactly the picture he wanted to make; that's for sure. But in this case that's not quite enough.

September 7, 2007 Full Review Source: Oregonian | Comment
Oregonian

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.

August 25, 2007 Full Review Source: Austin Chronicle | Comment
Austin Chronicle

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.

August 3, 2007 Full Review Source: Seattle Times | Comment
Seattle Times

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.

August 2, 2007 Full Review Source: Seattle Post-Intelligencer | Comment
Seattle Post-Intelligencer

There is an admirable rigor here and even a brief touch of sunshine, but almost none of the humor that marks [Kaurismaki's] best work.

July 15, 2007 Comment

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.

July 13, 2007 Full Review Source: Los Angeles Daily News | Comment
Los Angeles Daily News

The downbeat tone of Lights in the Dusk just escapes offense and self-parody due to Kaurismäki's careful, subtle craftsmanship.

July 11, 2007 Full Review Source: New York Press | Comment
New York Press

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.

June 16, 2007 Full Review Source: AV Club | Comment
AV Club
More Critic Reviews

Audience Reviews for Lights in the Dusk (Laitakaupungin valot)

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

November 18, 2011
SirPant

Super Reviewer

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

October 31, 2010
bookmunki

Super Reviewer

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Foreign Titles

  • Lichter der Vorstadt (DE)
  • Lights In The Dusk (UK)
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