Director Aki Kaurismäki

I’d meant to see this at the cinema but didn’t, so I was glad when I found it on the BBC. It’s an oddity: a “romance” between two lonely, hard-up people in Helsinki. The style is deadpan – there’s a big gulf between emotions and the characters’ affectless delivery of their lines. (It was described as a romantic comedy; we-ell, OK . . . but “Notting Hill” it ain’t.) It’s potentially very bleak: each time the radio is switched on the news is about more people killed in Ukraine. Their jobs are hard, monotonous and badly paid. He’s an incipient alcoholic.

There’s a lot going on behind the “action” and dialogue though. Colours: splashes of reds, yellows and blues. Music and songs function as a kind of Greek chorus and even drive the “plot”. Two glimpses of nature (in contrast to workplaces, bars and public transport) when optimism seems justified. Films are significant: the couple’s first date is going to The Dead Don’t Die. At the end of it two filmgoers come out – one comparing it to Bande à Part and the other to something by Robert Bresson (affectless acting again). She gives him her phone number; they are standing in front of film posters for a Godzilla-type film, something with Bardot, and – crucially – “Brief Encounter”. And, yes, he loses the phone number as soon as she walks away. I would need to check, but I think the camera is generally static. Lots of shots on public transport – including one rather heart-breaking one where Ansa is in the foreground, lonely and isolated, and behind her, slightly blurred, we see a young woman who resembles her rest her head on her partner’s shoulder. When the couple are finally reunited, he asks the name of her new dog; she tells him it is Chaplin . . . and they walk off into the sunset.

So realistic but not naturalistic – and rather lovely.

I realised later that Finns have reason to be very concerned about what Putin is doing in Ukraine.