The Match Factory Girl
A film by Aki Kaurismäki
1990/ Finland/ Runtime :70 mins
1st June 2014; 5.45pm
Perks Mini Theater
The Finnish director Aki Kaurismäki often portrays
unremarkable lives of unrelenting grimness, sadness, desolation. When his
characters are not tragic, he elevates them to such levels as stupidity,
cluelessness, self-delusion or mental illness. Iris, the match factory girl,
incorporates all of these attributes. His camera stares at her, and she stares
back. She is a pale blonde, slender, with a receding chin and eyes set deep in
pools of mascara.
Her job at the match factory is boring and thankless. She is
one of the few humans among the machines. She takes the tram home to Factory
Lane, where a shabby alley door admits her to the two-room apartment she shares
with her mother and stepfather. In the evenings she goes out seeking
companionship, and is ignored. At the club, nobody asks her to dance. In the
early scenes of this film Iris doesn't smoke at all. When she finally lights a
cigarette--with a match from her factory--it summons visions for her; ideas of
revenge. We watch as she acts on these notions.
Aki Kaurismäki creates a wickedly incisive and fascinating
dark comedy in The Match Factory Girl. In
characterizing the unremarkable protagonist, Iris, with an inexpressive,
Bressonian demeanor, Kaurismäki reflects the sustained, dispassionate cynicism
and alienation of contemporary society. Furthermore, the pervasive silence,
emotional callousness, and physical isolation reflect the innate loneliness and
dehumanization of the soul.
Unable to find connection in her cruel life, Iris
lashes out at her oppressive environment with the same familiar detachment that
has sustained her through disillusionment, abuse, humiliation, and heartbreak,
and in the process, destroys all that is left of her dignity and humanity.
Aki Kaurismäki
Aki Kaurismäki, born in Finland in 1957. After graduating in
media studies from the University of Tampere, Aki Kaurismäki started his career
as a co-screenwriter and actor in films made by his older brother, Mika
Kaurismäki. His debut as an independent director was Crime and Punishment
(1983), an adaptation of Dostoyevsky's novel set in modern Helsinki. He gained
worldwide attention with Leningrad Cowboys Go America. Kaurismäki has been
influenced by the French directors Jean-Pierre Melville and Robert Bresson. He has tried and managed to stick totally to the
inseparable realities of the real world His minimalist style is all his own
(and that of the great cinematographer of all his films, Timo Salminen); he
never entered the Finnish Film School (as he was suspected to be "too
cynical").
Much of Kaurismäki's work is centred on Helsinki, such as
the film Calamari Union, the Proletariat trilogy (Shadows in Paradise, Ariel
and The Match Factory Girl) and the Finland trilogy (Drifting Clouds, The Man
Without a Past and Lights in the Dusk). His vision of Helsinki is critical and
singularly unromantic. Indeed, his characters often speak about how they wish
to get away from Helsinki. Some end up in Mexico (Ariel), others in Estonia
(Shadows in Paradise, Calamari Union, and Take Care of Your Scarf, Tatjana).
The setting of most of his films is the 1980s, or at least contains elements
from that decade. Kaurismäki is, in fact, almost single-handedly responsible
for rejuvenating the failing Finnish film industry in the 1980s with a series
of highly original comedies made with his brother Mika. Over the past twenty
years, Kaurismäki has become one of the pre-eminent auteurs of international
art cinema, fusing minimalism and melodrama to poignantly depict the hardships
of Finland’s blue-collar class.
