Kaurismaki creates some beautiful frames, carefully composing his affectless characters against the rooms' colors, but there's something wrong with your story when people are upstaged by the decor.
Lights in the Dusk
2006 · 1h 18m · Not Rated
Comedy, Drama
Directed by
Aki Kaurismäki
Overview
Outcast by his co-workers and living alone, Koistinen is a security guard who works the night shift in a luxury shopping mall in Helsinki. But when icy blonde Mirja approaches him, the lonely Koistinen falls helplessly for her, unaware she is manipulating him for her criminal boyfriend.
Director and cast
Critics on Rotten Tomatoes
Top critics, in their words
It's a deceptively satisfying, almost magical achievement, like being stranded in a desert yet never going thirsty.
Kaurismaki is self-consciously tapping into the raw pathos of an earlier time in cinema (the pain and loss that often accompanied Charles Chaplin's Little Tramp, for example). The idea works, though it is finally wearing.
The director's existential sarcasm is muted here.
The distance Kaurismki creates belies his deeply humanistic streak. He engages characters in the direst of situations not to see them suffer but to search for hope.
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