nh-2

After seeing this movie I wondered how foreigners would experience it. Without knowledge of the social history of Finland in last century this movie must seem very strange. And if you know nothing about our civil war and the division of society these characters are devoid of meaning. Just two avoidant personalities, maybe? However from a Finnish perspective this is the perfect description of the outsiders of our society. The fellows who are left behind, but don´t agree with that viewpoint themselves. Who are stranded in the no-man´s-land between urban success and country desolation. They try to get along somehow and when they meet two Russian girls it´s the irony of fate staring them in the eye. The Russians are able to surpass social barriers without flinching, they just go on and talk, but these two Fenno-ugrian oedipal conflict prototypes can´t seem to find some meaning in this. Instead they resort to sulking, one of the basic Finnish social coping skills. What else can you do when you´ve got nothing in an otherwise expansive society, when there´s this huge discrepancy between your own success expectancies and reality, and when you watch the grandchildren of the victorious side in the Civil War pass you by. Not much, according to Kaurismäki who manages to make movies about that part of Finland that never goes to movies. For a Finn, the music is lovely as usual, the kind of music we grew up to after the war.

Two fortyish men who haven´t seen each other for two decades bump into each other one grey afternoon in the Place de la Bastille. They start talking and realise that neither of them has had sex for a long time. In a café they spot a young woman, lovely and sexy, Justine played by the irresistible Emmanuelle Devos. She invites them for supper at her apartment. The two men follow her in vain hope for something else than discussions on Mitterand that she offers. In turn, each of the men tries to seduce Justine, but for her, there´s only one man - Mitterand. Quite funny and moving, this movie would be a catastrophe with an American actress. But Devos is something else - she radiates womanhood and you understand and are able to emphatize with the two luckless fellows at her feet.