Throughout my exploration of brilliant Finnish filmmaker Aki Kaurismäki's "Proletariat Trilogy" I have noticed the repetition of several themes and stylistic choices, which include:Dry, deadpan humor.An often melancholic atmosphere.Cinematography that is both colorful and grounded in realityRealistic characters (meaning: characters that are highly flawed, often awkward-the type of people one ignores while taking a daily stroll, played by actors who are not glamorous or ugly).Getting the audience to root for behaviors they otherwise would not be rooting for."The Match Factory Girl", an excellent film that may very well be his masterpiece, embodies all of these little traits, especially the final one. I refuse to spoil the surprises this film keeps in store for its viewers, but I will imply that the heroine definitely engages in some acts that would be villainous in almost any other movie. However, through the lens of Aki Kaurismäki anyone can be likable, and anything can be hilarious. Although it is less predominant that in most of his other works, Aki Kaurismäki's sly sense of dry comedy lurks throughout this tragic drama. There were several instances in which I genuinely (and unexpectedly) burst with juvenile laughter at scenes that would often be considered too sad to be funny. I have compared certain Aki Kaurismäki films to the works of Wes Anderson, but now I must also compare him to the likes of Ingmar Bergman and Todd Solondz. There is no denying that this film is both dark and comic, it is a sad, yet surprisingly entertaining little look at an unfortunate life.

This was an extremely fun film for me just for how completely the director shocked my allegiances. Iris is fantastic. Kaurismäki makes you feel deeply sympathetic towards her and does it with virtually no words for most of the beginning of the film. The pacing is still solid, there isn't any unnecessary lingering, just solid scene setting. I don't remember any specific shots making an impact aside from maybe a long shot of the avenue her brother presumably takes her to. I'm wondering now if Kaurismäki subscribed to the dogma 95 method of cinematography from how sparse every shot was. In any case, it worked and I couldn't help but root for Iris as she desperately and unsuccessfully tried to find companionship. A few lines of dialogue, an undeserved slap, and a peeled orange all endeared her even more until she finally snapped. Even then, some of her alarming behavior, if not condone-able or justifiable, was at least somewhat understandable. It isn't until the drunk barfly scene that it becomes obvious something is seriously wrong. And even then I assumed some contrived machina would yet resolve everything for Iris. The ending is so cold and logical, it's brilliant. The initial feeling after shock is a bit of guilt for having rooted for her, as if you were complicit for having been in her corner, but then after some consideration, there's more of relief as if your ardent stance was shown to be thoroughly incorrect, but fortunately there were no consequences. If you think about it, the film is asking you to question how you determine a person's character without having known everything about them. Lots to ponder through such a simple story.

This is a downbeat story of a young woman, Iris, who works on an assembly line in a match stick factory in Finland. Iris' life would give testament to the truth of Thoreau's quote, "The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation." She comes home from her tedious job to a dismal apartment that she shares with her mother and stepfather--both major losers. They take what little money Iris earns and berate her if she spends on herself.While Iris is not unattractive, she presents such a sullen and drab appearance that she is ignored at community dances, until she buys a new red dress when she finally attracts the attention of a man. But don't plan on a happy ending to that one. Years of suppressed resentment can provoke dramatic acts of revenge.At a little over an hour this movie could have played as an episode on "Alfred Hitchcock Presents." Except it has better production values and acting that most shows on that program. I thought the humorous twist in the final scene was particularly in the style of Hitchcock.I enjoyed the establishing shots in the match factory. I have never given much thought about the process of creating match sticks and found the presentation of that interesting. So much complexity and machinery involved in producing such a simple product.

The Match Factory Girl (1990) was the final part of director Aki Kaurismäki's informal trilogy of films dealing with the day-to-day grind of working class characters on the fringes of society. The first two instalments were Shadows in Paradise (1986), in which a lonely bin man begins a relationship with a no-nonsense shop assistant in the hope of finding an escape from his repetitive, directionless existence, and Ariel (1988), wherein an unemployed man sets out for the bright lights of Helsinki and finds himself caught up in a series of delightfully picaresque adventures. For me, The Match Factory Girl was the least interesting and least successful of the three; lacking the broader elements of comedy found in the first film or the skillful story-telling and unconventional directorial touches of the second. It is still worth experiencing, and indeed, the rest of the reviews here are filled with glowing praise and rapturous acclaim, but for me, it simply failed to captivate me like many of Kaurismäki's other, more ambitious projects.The film is typical of the director's idiosyncratic style, with flat, deadpan performances, minimalist dialog, simplistic storytelling and an interesting juxtaposition between drab, naturalistic production design and warm cinematography. There are also the usual Kaurismäki preoccupations with 50's iconography, the use rock and roll music and melodramatic popular song to both punctuate and comment upon the story as it unfolds, and the uncomfortable moments of contemplative silence that propel the story without the usual need for dialog and character interaction. Indeed, this would seem to be one of the main concerns of The Match Factory Girl, with the lack of communication between the characters pushing the film into a darker territory that we might not usually expect. I don't think it is handled quite as well as it could have been, and indeed, at times felt reminiscent of the director's first film, the contemporary-set adaptation of Crime and Punishment (1983). Like Crime and Punishment, The Match Factory Girl opens with a repetitive and mechanical montage showing the central character's work, as a lump of wood is cut down, filed, processed and sorted through machine after machine, until a single file of little tiny matches pass on a conveyor belt before being boxed and sorted by the shy and dowdy Iris.The central performance from Kati Outinen is as good as you could expect from Kaurismäki's work, filled with empathy and a heartbreaking pathos that permeates the very centre of this sad and tragic tale. What most impresses us about the actress is her ability to suggest so much about the character without the use of predictable dialog; with her monotonous daily routine and lack of any kind of joy or colour at both work and home reflected in her face, movements and body language. Her most lengthy piece of dialog is heard in voice over, as she dictates a letter that she is writing to a man that she has recently had a one night stand with, and hopes that he might want to get in touch with her, not only for her own sake, but the sake of the baby that she is carrying. It is a completely heartbreaking sequence, and the only occasion wherein we get a sense of Iris as an intelligent and bright young woman able to express her thoughts and feelings eloquently. Few of the other characters in the film say more than two or three lines of dialog throughout the comparatively short sixty-odd minute running time, which seems to simply reinforce the uncomfortable and tragic loneliness at the centre of this character's life.However, where the film failed to work for me was in the presentation of the last ten to fifteen minutes, in which the emphasis on social-realist clichés and Kaurismäki's typically deadpan approach to character and drama gave way to a darker aspect that I felt was underdeveloped. Some have drawn comparisons with this film to Michael Haneke's similarly cold examinations into social dissatisfaction and cultural alienation in films like The Seventh Continent (1989) and 71 Fragments of a Chronology of Chance (1994), particularly in the way in which Kaurismäki uses the relentless background chatter of radio reports and TV news footage of the escalating violence of the protests in Beijing and the Tiananmen Square incident to foreground the narrative, whilst simultaneously foreshadowing later events and the eventual theme of defiance. However, at only a fraction over an hour in length, these ideas felt unfinished and somewhat rushed, with the really interesting notions of the film only really coming to our attention during the third and final act.The ending is no doubt an ironic swipe at Hollywood film-making, in which the emphasis seems to be on tying together loose ends and closing the book on the very last page. Here, Kaurismäki gives us an ending that suggests so much without ever spelling things out. It's a nice touch, in keeping with his usual approach to storytelling, but again, for me, felt somewhat underdeveloped. Other viewers haven't had such problems, but having arrived at this film after two of my very favourite Kaurismäki films, Hamlet Goes Business (1987) and Ariel, both of which I consider to be early masterpieces, I probably expected too much. Regardless, The Match Factory Girl is an interesting enough film from Kaurismäki, one that shows the continuation of his typical approach to cinema and his various thematic concerns - and one that is certainly worth experiencing, if only for the unconventional lead performance from Kati Outinen - but one that I also feel is something of less successful retread of Crime and Punishment and Shadows in Paradise.