Listen to the audio version of the article
A film of great humanity, perfect for the Christmas holidays: “Leaves in the Wind” by Aki Kaurismäki is the ideal film to see in theaters this weekend.
Six years after the remarkable “The Other Face of Hope,” the Finnish director is back behind the camera to tell the story of a man and a woman who meet one night in Helsinki. The two have difficult lives, marked by hardship and precariousness, but their meeting will be the beginning of a story that will help them love again.
Fourth chapter of films dedicated by Kaurismäki to the theme of the proletariat, after “Shadows in Paradise” (1986), “Ariel” (1988) and “The Match Girl” (1990), “Fallen Leaves” is a very delicate and tragicomic love story perfectly suited to the Scandinavian director. A few shots are enough to rediscover the author’s classic touch, increasingly essential and minimalist and capable of touching very deep chords with a film that is both a hymn to life and love and a great homage to cinema history.
In fact, Kaurismäki offers many quotes, including one for his friend Jim Jarmusch, whose latest feature film, “The Dead Don’t Die”, is being shown in a cinema. The tributes then go to the past, with various references to the beloved Robert Bresson (master of that very minimalism of which Kaurismäki is today one of the greatest disciples), to Jean-Luc Godard and a magnificent, poetic and emotional one to Charlie Chaplin, who has always one of the director’s great inspirations.
Melancholy and smiles
“Leaves in the wind” is a film full of melancholy, but it is also a feature film capable of making us smile and giving very strong hope within the extremely desolate context it describes. In addition to the difficulties of the world of work, the film proposes themes of great relevance, starting from those radio broadcasts in which the chilling news of the war in Ukraine is continuously heard. Despite the setting full of dramatic elements, Kaurismäki always finds the right irony, managing to create a very human and exciting film. There are also numerous splendid shots, with a purely pictorial style and effective in recalling the paintings of Edward Hopper: the use he makes of lights and colors should be studied in film schools and every single image is always personal and capable of moving. the result is an unmissable film, among the best of the entire season, which deservedly obtained the Jury Prize at the 2023 Cannes Film Festival.
«Leaves in the wind» and the other films of the week
Photogallery4 foto
View
Wish
Among the new releases of the week there is also “Wish”, the Disney animated Christmas classic which this year however has a truly special task: on the occasion of the centenary of the birth of the Mickey Mouse house, this new film combines the past and the present, through a modern narrative but full of visual references to Disney’s history. The film is set in Rosas, a remote and fantastic space, where dreams can come true. Here lives Asha, a very intelligent and optimistic 17-year-old girl who cares so much about her community. One evening in desperation, the young woman makes a passionate request to the stars in the sky and her wish is granted. Undoubtedly it is a completely self-celebratory film but, although this may be a small limitation, the film also manages to move thanks to the long succession of quotes and references to practically all the previous Disney animated classics, starting from the progenitor “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs”: Asha’s friends refer precisely to the cute dwarves of the 1937 masterpiece and throughout the narrative we find many other characters ready to create a short circuit with the past. The narrative has some passages that are a little obvious, but the film is still enjoyable and capable of providing good entertainment. It was no easy task to represent a century of history, but “Wish” manages reasonably well to achieve its ambitious goal.