Fallen Leaves

The first thing you notice in Fallen Leaves isn't the romance or the drab, candy-colored walls of Helsinki. It’s the radio. Specifically, it’s the unrelenting news of the war in Ukraine crackling through old-fashioned speakers in kitchens and workshops. In any other movie, this would feel like a heavy-handed attempt at "relevance," but in the hands of Aki Kaurismäki, it’s the perfect backdrop for a story about two people trying to find a reason to keep going.

I watched this film on a Tuesday evening while drinking lukewarm peppermint tea, and I realized about twenty minutes in that I hadn't checked my phone once. In our current era of "content" designed to be scrolled past, there’s something genuinely radical about a movie that demands you slow down to the pace of a Finnish winter.

Love in the Time of Layoffs

Our protagonists are Ansa and Holappa, played with magnificent restraint by Alma Pöysti and Jussi Vatanen. Ansa works at a supermarket where she’s eventually fired for the high crime of taking home a sandwich that was ten minutes past its expiration date. Holappa is a construction worker who hides vodka bottles in electrical boxes because the crushing boredom of modern labor is too much to bear sober.

They meet at a karaoke bar, a sequence that is easily one of my favorites in recent cinema. It isn't a "sparkling" Hollywood meet-cute. It’s two lonely people looking at each other across a room filled with middle-aged men singing mournful ballads. Alma Pöysti has this incredible face—she looks like a silent film star trapped in a modern-day grocery store vest. She doesn't need a three-page monologue to tell you she’s lonely; she just looks at a stray dog or a microwave dinner, and you feel the weight of it in your chest.

Jussi Vatanen is equally great as the stoic, self-destructive Holappa. He’s charming in a very specific, "I haven't smiled since 2004" kind of way. Their chemistry is built on silences and shared cigarettes, which feels infinitely more honest than the hyper-verbal bantering we see in most rom-coms today. The film is basically a cinematic hug from a grumpy Finnish uncle. It’s warm, but it smells like tobacco and doesn't want to talk about its feelings.

A $1.4 Million Miracle

In a landscape dominated by $200 million blockbusters that often feel like they were assembled by a committee in a boardroom, Fallen Leaves is a testament to the power of the indie spirit. Aki Kaurismäki (who also directed The Man Without a Past and Le Havre) made this for a fraction of what a Marvel movie spends on its catering budget, yet every frame feels more intentional than anything I’ve seen on a massive green screen lately.

The production design is a masterclass in "less is more." The sets are minimal, the colors are bold—deep reds, mustard yellows, seafoam greens—and the lighting reminds me of an Edward Hopper painting if Hopper had a dry sense of humor. It’s technically the fourth entry in Kaurismäki’s "Proletariat Trilogy" (don't worry about the math; it’s a very indie move to have a four-part trilogy), and it carries that torch of celebrating the dignity of the working class without ever becoming patronizing.

I found out later that the dog in the film, a charming stray that Ansa adopts, is actually Aki Kaurismäki’s own dog, Alma. It’s that kind of personal touch that makes indie films like this stick to your ribs. There’s no franchise building here, no post-credits scene teasing a "Karaoke Cinematic Universe." It’s just a vision, executed with zero compromises.

Why It Matters Right Now

There’s a lot of talk lately about "franchise fatigue," but I think what we’re actually tired of is cynicism. Fallen Leaves is a contemporary film that acknowledges how hard the world is—the war, the precariousness of work, the isolation of technology—but it refuses to be miserable. It’s surprisingly funny, often leaning into a deadpan comedy that feels like a refined version of what you might see in a Wes Anderson flick, but with much higher stakes.

When Ansa and Holappa finally go on a date, they go to see Jim Jarmusch’s The Dead Don't Die. It’s a hilarious meta-nod to another titan of indie cinema, but it also highlights the film's core theme: even when things feel apocalyptic, there is still art, there is still humor, and there is still the possibility of holding someone’s hand. It’s a movie for people who find MCU quips as exhausting as a root canal. It trusts the audience to find the humor in the pauses.

Even the way they lose each other’s contact info—a lost scrap of paper—feels like a deliberate rejection of the smartphone era. It forces the characters to actually search for one another, making the eventual payoff feel earned rather than algorithmic.

Fallen Leaves is a small film with a massive heart. It clocks in at a lean 81 minutes, proving that you don’t need a three-hour runtime to say something profound about the human condition. It’s a love story for the exhausted, a comedy for the cynical, and a beautiful reminder that even in the bleakest Helsinki winter, something can still bloom. If you’re tired of the noise of modern cinema, let this quiet, colorful, whiskey-soaked gem be your sanctuary for an hour and a half.

I left the theater wanting to adopt a dog and buy a very expensive, very red coat. Mostly, I just felt a little bit better about the world. And in 2024, that’s worth its weight in gold.