• Lights in the Dusk

9/25/23 (Sun)

The third offering (2006) in Kaurismäki’s Finland/Loser Trilogy. The Finnish title Laitakaupungin Valot is a takeoff on Chaplin’s City Lights (Kaupungin Valot), apparently meaning something like “Lights from the Other Side of the Tracks” – if that’s true, maybe they should have gone with an equally pun-filled Seedy Lights or Shitty Lights (pardon the language) or Far-From-the-City Lights. Both films end with the hapless protagonist getting out of prison and an uplifting clasp of hands with a woman. But the resemblance pretty much ends there, and maybe the English titlists were wise to ignore the pun.

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• Drifting Clouds

9/23/23 (Sat)

The title of Aki Kaurismäki’s 1996 feature, the first in his so-called Finland (or Loser) Trilogy, has the whiff of Naruse’s Floating Clouds and even the same Japanese title (浮き雲 here vs. Naruse’s浮雲). However, the bleakness of the Japanese film is nowhere evident in Kaurismäki, whose dry presentation and pokerfaced characters deliver a black comedy with an unexpectedly upbeat ending.

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