Le Havre: Aki Kaurismäki

It's almost surreal to see Finnish auteur Aki Kaurismäki to make a film so...optimistic.  Oh, I'm sure that he's made upbeat films before. But I'm only familiar with his more famous work like The Match Factory Girl (1990) which was never known for containing rainbows and sunshine, if you know what I mean.  But I enjoyed Le Havre, his latest film.  It's uncanny how the techniques he employed so successfully to create atmospheres of black comedy and despair translated to this film. We find at the center of the film Marcel Marx, an ex-bohemian and struggling writer living in the port city of Le Havre, France. He comes across a teenage illegal immigrant from Gabon named Idrissa who had escaped a security sweep which detained his friends and family.  So Marcel finds himself hiding Idrissa from the immigration authorities and the police. Surprisingly, the film spends more time regarding Marcel's relationships with his sickly wife, neighbors, and a local police officer than with Idrissa. I can only imagine that if a similar plot were pitched to a Hollywood studio, the film would focus on cultural misunderstandings between Marcel and Idrissa. But Le Havre is more nuanced about that. Idrissa is a catalyst through which Marcel changes his life and the lives around him. It left me feeling satisfied and even hopeful.  I've always hated it when great directors succumb to sadness, depression, and despair in their later films.  So the thought that Kaurismäki's films might start getting progressively happier pleases me. There is enough sadness and grief in the world. We need more happy films. Not films filled with artificial emotions, but films that tell real stories that reassure ourselves of mankind's future.

7/10