With deadpan humor and unblinking insight, this film portrays a romance between two seemingly cold individuals. You will never see the late work of Jim Jarmusch the same way.
Fallen Leaves (Kuolleet lehdet)
Critic Rating
(read reviews)User Rating
- Finland,
- Germany
- 2023
- · 81m
Director
Aki Kaurismäki
Cast
Alma Pöysti,
Jussi Vatanen,
Anna Karjalainen,
Kaisa Karjalainen,
Janne Hyytiäinen
Genre
Comedy,
Drama
The film tells the story of Ansa, a supermarket shelf-stocker on a zero-hour contract, later a recyclable plastic sorter, and Holappa, a sandblaster and alcoholic, whose paths have accidentally crossed and who, despite adversity and misunderstandings, try to build some kind of relationship on the harsher side of state welfare.
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100
The Associated Press by Jake Coyle
Fallen Leaves is the best big-screen romance of the year even though its prospective lovers exchange only a handful of words and, for most of the film, don’t know each other’s names.
100
The Irish Times by Tara Brady
The same droll humour and keen social awareness that have defined [Kaurismaki's] work since Leningrad Cowboys Go America, in 1989, are now put in service of a lovely, star-crossed romance.
100
Los Angeles Times by Carlos Aguilar
The year’s most succinctly perfect film, Fallen Leaves aims to do for us what companionship does for its couple: make this treacherous life a bit more bearable.
100
Original-Cin by Thom Ernst
Kaurismäki does not shrink from present-day buzz-kills like updates on Russia’s attacks against Ukraine, or the afflictions of poverty on Helsinki’s working class. But here again, is the contrast; even amid conflict, things charming and funny can occur.
100
New York Magazine (Vulture) by Bilge Ebiri
There’s life boiling under the simple surfaces, which is both Kaurismäki’s aesthetic mantra and his great theme. At their best, these quiet, cool films tear you to pieces. Fallen Leaves already feels like one of his signature works.
100
RogerEbert.com by Glenn Kenny
The key to this movie’s winning emotional delicacy is its formal sturdiness. Every shot has a specific job to do and does it well. The performances are measured and restrained.
95
The Atlantic by David Sims
Again, Fallen Leaves is a comedy, and a consistently funny one, even if most of its laugh lines are gruffly delivered.
91
Collider by Chase Hutchinson
It is a triumph in every sense of the word just as it is a humble portrait of life's small moments. The way Kaurismäki strikes this balance is breathtaking in its patience, proving how the most moving works of cinema can come from the simplest of places.
90
Time by Stephanie Zacharek
Sometimes a movie reaches the unreachable in us, not because it’s a grand masterpiece but because it’s as quiet and intimate as air.
90
The New York Times by Manohla Dargis
Fallen Leaves is consistently funny, but its laughs arrive without fanfare. They slide in calmly, at times obliquely in eccentric details, offbeat juxtapositions, taciturn exchanges, long pauses and amiably barbed insults.
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