Released in 2006, Aki Kaurismäki's film LAITAKAUPUNGIN VALOT (released internationally as Lights in the Dusk), completes a loose trilogy of films that deal with underdogs, employ similar colour palettes and are set in a strange fantasy Finland where the social divisions and rock music of the 1950s have persisted into the present day.The film is concerned with the sufferings of Koistinen (Janne Hyytiäinen), a security guard who is not just neglected by his coworkers and society, but eventually set up by femme fatale Mirja (Maria Järvenhelmi) for a jewelry heist. Prominent supporting roles are Lindholm (Ilkka Koivula), the mastermind of the criminal operation, and Aila (Maria Heiskanen), a hot dog vendor who seems to be Koistinen's only contact with the world, though "friend" would be too strong a word.The previous two entries in Kaurismäki's "Losers" trilogy -- DRIFTING CLOUDS and THE MAN WITHOUT A PAST, had their characters knocked about, but ultimately they pulled through and found happiness. LAITAKAUPUNGIN VALOT is a much bleaker film. The cruelty directed at Koistinen is more brutal and the ending, while hinting at something positive, is ambiguous and painful to watch.Kaurismäki has really come to repeat himself, maintaining not just the same atmosphere from film to film, but even reusing stock scenes like a man being beaten and left for dead at the docks, prison labour and awkward dates. Nonetheless, here he offers something new in crossing the line from deadpan humour to outright tragedy. Kaurismäki has always maintained an austere tone, but here he pares things down even further. This is a flawed film, but one with many admirable features and I'd generally recommend that one see it, though perhaps after the earlier two films in this trilogy.

I love foreign films. Maybe its because they aren't spoiled with the propaganda and commercialization prevalent in Hollywood films. This little jewel has made a place as one of my favorites. I discovered it on the Sundance Channel one day in August but I didn't watch it all. Even then I realized it would be best to watch it in colder weather to match the climate on the film. I only watch Dr. Zhivago in January or February. This film is wonderfully minimalistic. It doesn't tax your brain but is never boring due to the absorbing cinematography. Also, I love films that have a lot of quiet passages and this one does not disappoint. Thank God for movies like this. They cleanse the palate of inferior Hollywood drivel.

Clocking in at a pithy one-hour-and-fourteen minutes, "Lights in the Dusk" is an existentialist Finnish comedy in which a mild-mannered night watchman, who seems to be living in a world of his own, becomes an unwitting patsy in a jewelry-store robbery when he opens up to a woman who has seemingly taken a romantic interest in him.As the much put-upon working man who allows a femme fatale to trick him into doing her dirty work for her, Janne Hyytiaien gives a marvelously deadpanned performance that perfectly reflects the spare, archly humorous world director Aki Kaurismaki has created for the film. With a tone of cool detachment, the script rarely lets us into the mind of this strangely uncommunicative and inscrutable young man, whose emotions and thoughts are always buried somewhere deep beneath an expressionless surface. Yet, somehow, despite his reticence, he still manages to pique our interest and engage our sympathy, primarily because his predicament and his lack of a conventional reaction to it are both so comically unsettling. We find ourselves identifying and rooting for him even though we don't really get to know all that much about him. In a way, he reminds us a bit of Meursault from Camus' "The Stranger," a man so emotionally detached from the world around him that his actions aren't always explicable to those of us who are residing in the "real world" watching him perform them.Though it is a difficult film to pigeonhole, "Lights in the Dusk" is a modest, unassuming work that touches both the heart and the funny bone in roughly equal measure.

Compared to normal Hollywood movies I still enjoy Kaurismäki's films, but this is definitely not one of his best ones.One of the biggest problems of this film is the director's attitude towards his main character. Koistinen's situation is getting worse with every action he takes. That's not the problem, but Kaurismäki doesn't offer a minimum of possible explanations to Koistinen's behaviour.I don't expect a complete interpretation of his work by a director or by an author, but as a viewer of a film or as a reader of a book you need at least some information to start at. So I can only imagine that the reasons for Koistinen's behaviour lie in his state of mind and/or in his past.But this is criticism at a high level. There are still some typical Kaurismäki-scenes in this film which I like a lot.