Aki Kaurismäki is Finland’s answer to Jim Jarmusch so you know in advance that his movies won’t be action packed. His latest movie Le Havre is plot driven but events unfold in a slow, unhurried fashion and it is full of enigmatic characters who never explain their actions.
A woman who thinks she is terminally ill lies in hospital and a friend reads her to sleep with a Franz Kafka story. A man named Marcel Marx has artistic aspirations but is reduced to earning his living shining shoes near Le Havre station. Marx witnesses the shooting of recent customer in the first scene and expresses relief that the man paid first. Later he and his neighbours help a young illegal immigrant boy who has been separated from his family and is on the run from the police.
Le Havre is billed as a comedy but there are no laugh out loud moments and any humour here is black and deadpan, Finnish people are not renowned for being gregarious and Aki Kaurismäki does nothing to change the national stereotype. The dialogue is sparse and wooden. “I’m home” says the husband; “I can see that”, says his wife. Neither of them smile.
There are lots of scenes like this and the static shots add to the impression that the characters are resigned to their still lives like unenthusiastic existentialists. The laconic but ultimately kind-hearted detective on the trail of the African boy is apparently modelled on the policeman in Dostoyevsky’s Crime And Punishment.
There’s a cameo role for Jean-Pierre Lèaud (an actor best know as Francois Truffaut’s alter-ego Antoine Doinel) and a memorable concert scene by a real life cult French singer named Little Bob who looks like a female impersonator mimicking Johnny Hallyday. It’s tempting to imagine that Kaurismäki built the whole film around these small parts.
The movie is fable of sorts which explains why in Italy it is shown under the title ‘Miracolo A Le Havre’. The moral is not especially deep seeming to suggest merely if you show kindness to those in need, good things will come into your own life.
This is Little Bob’s moment of glory:
