Plot
Ansa [a] is a single woman who lives in Helsinki. She works on a zero-hour contract in a supermarket, stocking the shelves. The equally lonely and depressed Holappa works as a sandblaster and frequently drinks on the job. One night, co-worker and room-mate Huotari proposes they go to a karaoke bar, and he reluctantly complies. There, the two drink heavily and Huotari sings for the audience. His singing is complimented by Liisa, who is drinking with her friend and co-worker Ansa. While Huotari tries to seduce Liisa and fails, Holappa and Ansa notice each other, but do not talk. Another night, while returning home, Ansa sees Holappa drunk and unconscious at a bus stop. After checking that he is okay, she leaves just before he wakes up.
Ansa is eventually fired for taking expired food from the supermarket. In desperate need of money, she starts working as a dishwasher at a bar for a meagre under-the-table salary. On her second day on the job, her boss is arrested for peddling drugs, and she is jobless once again, but runs into Holappa who buys her a coffee and a pastry. They later see The Dead Don't Die at the cinema and seem to hit it off. At the end of the date, she writes down her phone number for Holappa, but says she won't reveal her name until the next time they meet. While stopping to smoke a cigarette, he unknowingly drops and loses the paper from his pocket.
Ansa grows disappointed waiting for a phone call while Holappa has no way of tracking her down. Remembering that Ansa told him that she lives near the cinema, he repeatedly goes there and waits at the entrance for hours. He eventually sustains an injury at work, and is fired after failing a breathalyzer test, which also gets him kicked out of the company dormitory. Ansa and Holappa eventually reunite outside the cinema one night, and Ansa invites him over for dinner. Everything seems to go well, until she catches him drinking from a hip flask in her flat. Because of the tragedies alcoholism has caused to her family, an angry Ansa confronts Holappa, who refuses to "take orders" and storms out. Without a home, he sleeps on benches at night and gets a job in construction, but is once again fired for drinking at work. Nonetheless, he continues to despondently drink at bars.
One day, while returning from her new ironworker job, Ansa saves a homeless dog by adopting it. At home, she washes the dog and treats it with affection. Missing Ansa, who also misses him, Holappa finds housing and pours his liquor bottles down the drain. He calls Ansa (who answers with her name, while he greets her with "it's me") to apologise, and they agree to meet up right away. On his way to her house, however, he is struck by a train.
Ansa waits for him at home, oblivious to the accident. One day while walking her dog, Ansa runs into Huotari who reveals that Holappa is in a coma. Huotari also asks for Liisa's number, despite knowing she thinks he is too old for her. Ansa gives him the number and goes to the hospital. Though she only knows Holappa's surname, Ansa cons the staff by pretending to be his "sister in faith" in order to see him. Each day while Holappa is in a coma, she reads and talks to him. Meanwhile, Liisa indicates that she and Huotari have begun seeing each other.
One day, Holappa wakes up and leaves the hospital with Ansa and her dog. Holappa asks what the dog is called. She answers "Chaplin".
Production
Fallen Leaves was produced by Sputnik Oy and Bufo, and co-produced by the German company Pandora Film. The production also received the support of the Finnish Film Foundation, Yle, the Finnish Broadcasting Company, ZDF/ARTE, Filmförderungsanstalt and Film-und Medienstiftung NRW. [16]
Filming began in August 2022 in the Kallio district of Helsinki. Timo Salminen served as director of photography. [17] Production was done "in one take" and in Kaurismäki's typical style, according to Pöysti: "don't rehearse and don't read the script too much". [8]
The time period of the film is unclear, and it has been said to be set in an alternative reality. [18] The wall calendar shown in the film shows autumn 2024, but the news narrated on the radio takes place in the early moments of the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine. [19] Tube radios, landline phones and old-fashioned trains are used in the world of the film, among other things. [18] It also contains several references to films, including Jim Jarmusch's The Dead Don't Die , David Lean's Brief Encounter , and Charlie Chaplin's Limelight . [8] According to Alma Pöysti, the female lead, "the film is about lonely people with baggage, who meet later in life. It takes courage to fall in love later in life." [8] It has been described as a tragicomedy. [20]
Reception
Critical response
On Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of 97% based on 167 reviews, with an average rating of 8.3/10. The website's consensus reads, "A quirky tale of star-crossed lovers, Fallen Leaves is a life-affirming gem from Finnish filmmaker Kaurismäki." [36] On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 86 out of 100, based on 30 critic reviews, indicating "universal acclaim". [37]
Reviewing the film following its Cannes premiere, Peter Bradshaw of The Guardian wrote that the film is "romantic and sweet-natured, in a deadpan style that in no way undermines or ironises the emotions involved and with some sharp things to say about contemporary politics." [38] Glenn Kenny of RogerEbert.com gave the film four out of four stars, stating that "just an hour and twenty minutes long, the movie is a soulful romance that goes through conventional narrative paces." [39] Time called the film a "quiet masterpiece" and possibly Kaurismäki's greatest film. [40]
American filmmaker Dean Fleischer Camp praised the film, saying "Kaurismäki tells sincere stories about marginalized peoples struggling for the basic stuff—food, shelter, dignity, love. But the films themselves are bone-dry comedies which encourage us to laugh at the protagonists' misfortunes, or at least at the absurdity of the world's indifference to them. And by depicting such sympathetic underdogs with such a coolly detached brush, Kaurismäki evokes in us, the audience, our very best. When the lights come up, I feel radicalized toward empathy and sincerity, ready to take up arms against the cynicism within myself and against the ironic posturing that is pop culture's favorite self-defensive crouch." [41]
In August 2023, it was voted as the Best Film of the Year by the International Film Critics Federation Fipresci. [42]
Fallen Leaves was ranked first on Time 's top 10 best films of 2023 list, [43] and fifth on Cahiers du Cinéma 's top 10 films of 2023 list. [44] The film was included in the National Board of Review's list of the Top Five International Films of 2023. [45] AP News listed the film among the best films of the year; of the two critics who responded to the list, Lindsey Bahr ranked the film at #6 and Jake Coyle at #1. [46] In December 2024, Fallen Leaves was chosen by the Dicastery for Evangelization as one of the official film recommendations for the Jubilee Year 2025. [47] Filmmakers Lisandro Alonso, Víctor Erice, Ciro Guerra, Bill Hader and Rodrigo Moreno praised the film, with Hader describing it as "Simple and beautiful storytelling." [48] [49]
