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Directed by Matti Ijäs and written with Arto Meller, Räpsy & Dolly aka Paris Waits (1990) is a tragicomic love story of a petty criminal and a former cabaret dancer. Detective Karisto (Kari Väänänen) releases Auno “Räpsy” Pirilä (Matti Pellonpää) from prison, who in turn has to calve his childhood friend Börje (Pertti Sveholm) from criminal activities. Alcoholic Dolly (Raija Paalanen) takes Räpsy to live in Kallio, Helsinki, and hopes to move to Paris with her in the spring.

1.72GB | 1h 29mn | 1017×550 | mkv

https://nitro.download/view/E5360FA3BC568AA/Rapsy_Ja_Dolly_(1990)_DVDRip.mkv
https://nitro.download/view/CC4FA3FA0DF9EB3/Rapsy_Ja_Dolly_(1990)_DVDRip.srt
or
https://nitro.download/view/120E2B1243E2045/Rapsy_Ja_Dolly_(1990)_DVDRip.part1.rar
https://nitro.download/view/EA3794FFA653840/Rapsy_Ja_Dolly_(1990)_DVDRip.part2.rar
https://nitro.download/view/CC4FA3FA0DF9EB3/Rapsy_Ja_Dolly_(1990)_DVDRip.srt

Language(s):Finnish
Subtitles:English

The post Matti Ijäs – Räpsy & Dolly eli Pariisi odottaa AKA Dolly and Her Lover (1990) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

Arvottomat (1982)

A criminal, his friend and his former girlfriend find their lives intertwining with each other.

Interview with Mika Kaurismaki

1.46GB | 1h 52m | 1040×536 | mkv

https://nitro.download/view/3623CCD4C6858F0/The_Worthless-CG.mkv
https://nitro.download/view/944F3E3E6F67F69/Interview_with_Mika_Kaurismaki.avi
https://nitro.download/view/6A2799DD4B5133C/Interview_with_Mika_Kaurismaki.srt

Language(s):Finnish
Subtitles:English

The post Mika Kaurismäki – Arvottomat AKA The Worthless [+ Extra] (1982) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

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The enigmatically titled Take Care of Your Scarf, Tatjana [Pidä huivista kiinni, Tatjana] is Kaurismäki’s take on the road movie. It represents something of a contradiction for non-Finnish viewers, being one of the director’s most accessible films but also one whose subtleties are unlikely to be fully understood by a foreign audience, and I’m including myself in that sweeping suggestion.

The journey begins when the hulking, coffee-addicted Valto (Mato Valtonen – imagine a Finnish Ron Perlman with a rock ‘n’ roll haircut), who appears to make a living sewing clothing for his intolerant mother, is informed that the house is devoid of his favourite brew. In a quiet rage he locks his mother in a closet, steals her money and hits the road with a portable coffee maker and his vodka-swilling auto-mechanic friend Reino (Matti Pellonpää). When they take a break they are eyed up by Russian Klavdia (Kirsi Tykkyläinen) and Estonian Tatjana (a perkier than usual Kati Outinen), two women looking to catch a ride from these “two dumb Finns.” Despite the language barrier, the women attempt friendly communication with their hosts, only to have both men regress into a coffee and vodka-fueled state of sulking shyness.

The two lead characters may be as forlorn as ever, but the underlying sadness and unbroken misfortune of the Underdog Trilogy is completely absent here, making it one of Kaurismäki’s most openly humorous films. This doesn’t mean it’s crammed with funny one-liners and amusing pratfalls – the comedy comes totally from character moments, whether it be Valto’s peculiar snoring, Reino casually wiping the oil dipstick on his companion’s tie, or the hilarious 2-shot in which Reino gets stuck into a second vodka bottle while Valto stares ahead, jittering with the effects of a caffeine overload. The bulk of the humour stems from Valto and Reino’s cheerless discomfort at their female companions, highlighted when the pair are reluctantly obliged to share hotel rooms with their guests – traditionally a moment for the breakdown of interpersonal barriers and the blossoming of romance, here it proves nothing of the sort, with Reino drinking himself into a stupor and Valto gruffly reluctant to even acknowledge Klavdia’s presence.

This communication gap is clearly about more than gender shyness and it’s here that non-Finnish viewers are likely to miss out, as issues of culture and language and even history enter an equation that many of us do not have all the numbers needed to successfully calculate. But in a film this rich in character detail, this presents no real barrier to appreciation and enjoyment, and for me added an air of intrigue that prompted an immediate phone call my Finnish friends for their insights (which I’d be sharing right at this moment had they had actually been in).

With the barrier between the sexes seemingly insurmountable, the gentle, hesitant hints of attraction that develop seem all the more touching, encapsulated in the quietest of moments, as when Tatjana rests her head on Reino’s shoulder and he nervously puts his arm round her, or in the present that Klavdia later gives to Valto as she boards her train.

The decision to shoot in black and white may well be one prompted by a fondness for road movies of years past (I was occasionally reminded of Wim Wenders’ 1974 Alice in the Cities and 1976 Kings of the Road). It also shifts the narrative slightly out of the here and now, something whose relevance only really registers in the penultimate scene, an outrageous stop for coffee that at first seems like a flashback but proves most likely to be the product of Valto’s fantasy. The implications of this are intriguing. As he returns home to unlock his mother and return to normality, we are left to wonder if, as in fellow minimalist Takeshi Kitano’s 1990 3-4 x jûgatsu [Boiling Point], the entire journey was after all just one of the mind.

Either way, Take Care of You Scarf, Tatjana is a low key delight and probably Kaurismäki’s most upbeat (fictional) movie to date. It’s winning example of the appeal of this particular director’s style, and proof positive that unhappy people do not necessarily make for an unhappy film.

1.51GB | 1h 02mn | 1024×552 | mkv

https://nitroflare.com/view/2CCCC00734A3D63/Aki_Kaurismaki_-_(1994)_Take_Care_of_Your_Scarf,_Tatiana.mkv

Language:Finnish, Russian
Subtitles:English

The post Aki Kaurismäki – Pidä huivista kiinni, Tatjana AKA Take Care of Your Scarf, Tatiana (1994) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

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Based on the same 19th-century novel (Henri Murger’s Scenes de la Vie de Boheme) that inspired Puccini’s opera, the story is about three down-and-out losers doomed to penury and artistic obsession. There’s Albanian painter Rodolfo (Matti Pellonpää), playwright Marcel (Andre Wilms) and composer Schaunard (Kari Väänänen). Their problems are exactly the same: no rent or food money and the futile struggle to be recognized.

It doesn’t help Marcel that he refuses to reduce his 21-act play to commercial size or that the chances of Schaunard’s latest work making it (it’s called The Influence of Blue on Art) seem remote.

The story — by Kaurismäki’s disingenuous admission — is intentionally awful and meandering. But it’s regularly interrupted by the mutely amusing — or the sad. Enter, for instance, rich gentleman Jean-Pierre Leaud (Francois Truffaut’s erstwhile leading man), who commissions a self-portrait from Rodolfo. While Leaud poses, playwright Marcel, pretending to hang up the client’s tuxedo jacket, uses it for a job interview. He gets the job and brings the jacket back just in time (actually, he’s about 10 excruciating seconds late).

An affair between Rodolfo and Mimi (Evelyne Didi), a quiet, constantly perturbed woman, becomes very real, particularly when poverty (and Rodolfo’s eviction by the immigration authorities) forces them apart. She eventually returns but they have to face her tubercular future together.

2.74GB | 1h 42m | 1024×552 | mkv

https://nitro.download/view/A36A12A146A0004/Aki_Kaurismaki_-_(1992)_The_Bohemian_Life.mkv

Language:French
Subtitles:English

The post Aki Kaurismäki – La vie de bohème AKA The Bohemian Life (1992) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

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Aki Kaurismäki’s first feature, Crime And Punishment (1983), updated and transplanted Dostoyevsky’s novel to present day Finland. Since then, the deadpan auteur has written, directed and edited some 20 films, which is about a fifth of Finland’s cinematic output since the Eighties. His films, however, have always proven more popular abroad than at home. Apart from Britain, few nations like to see their own follies, iniquities and all-round miserabilism being paraded in affectionately mocking entertainments, and Kaurismäki’s focus is very much on the dark absurdities of his motherland’s down-and-outs, drunks and dispossessed.

The themes of crime and punishment recur in Kaurismäki’s Ariel (1988), the second in a loose triad of films (along with Shadows In Paradise and The Match Factory Girl) that would become collectively known as the “underdog trilogy” or “workers’ trilogy”. In it, a man is unjustly sentenced and imprisoned, only to break free and commit several real crimes – but despite its grim subject matter, Kaurismäki is ultimately too much of a romantic to present a vision as unremittingly bleak as, say, Robert Bresson’s otherwise similar L’Argent (1983).
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After the rural mine where he works shuts down, and his father shoots himself in despair, Taisto Kasurinen (Turo Pajala) takes off for the city in his father’s white convertible, with his life’s savings in his wallet. Already beaten and robbed before he has even arrived, Taisto is homeless, jobless and cashless when he runs into Irmeli (Susanna Haavisto), a single mother with a range of low-end careers to pay off her debts. Within a day of their meeting, they are talking about being together forever – but fate will instead send Taisto to jail on a false charge.

There he shares a cell with Mikkonen (Kaurismäki regular Matti Pellonpää), an older repeat offender, and with Irmeli’s help the pair plot a daring escape – but there will be further obstacles to face outside before Taisto can make a new life with Irmeli and her young son.

When asked how he is doing in jail, Taisto responds, “Alright – I’ve got a job.” It is more than he can say for the world beyond, where he always struggles to find regular employment, and where he seems to be constantly surrounded by thieves, con artists and stone-cold killers. A central part of Kaurismäki’s worldview is the notion that, for the down-trodden underclass, everywhere is a prison. The only comforts here are the dignity of labour, the refuge of love, and the warmth of nostalgia – this last embodied by a protagonist who sports a quiff, leather jacket and shades, who drives a classic car, and who listens to blues and rockabilly on his portable transistor radio. For, like so many Kaurismäki heroes, Taisto is essentially a character of the Fifties who has been set adrift in a later, colder age.

Ariel is a compelling blend of gritty realism and escapist fantasy – a polarity perhaps best emblematised by, on the one hand, the film noir which Taisto watches on television, and on the other, the Finnish cover version of The Wizard of Oz’s Somewhere Over the Rainbow with which Ariel closes. The influence of both these elements is never entirely absent – Taisto will re-enact the violent heist he has seen Bogart performing, but he is also an innocent dreaming that he can leave the Great Depression behind by escaping to a faraway land.

Beautifully shot by Kaurismäki’s regular DP Timo Salmonen, Ariel uses a laidback, minimalist aesthetic (long lingering shots of silent, stony-faced characters) to conceal a remarkably busy plot involving a roadtrip, an assault, a whirlwind romance, an arrest, a trial, a jailbreak, a heist, a double-cross, and a rendezvous, all compressed in less than 70 minutes. It is also, for all its gloom, very funny – and as for the title, you will just have to wait till the end to grasp its optimistic significance.

2.01GB | 1 h 12 min | 1024×552 | mkv

https://nitro.download/view/2C3EC4C7DB8921E/Aki_Kaurismaki_-_(1988)_Ariel.mkv

Language:Finnish
Subtitles:English

The post Aki Kaurismäki – Ariel (1988) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

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In Goran Dukic’s Wristcutters: A Love Story, limbo is imagined as a place where no one ever smiles, where furnishings and cars all seem second-hand, where the colours are all drab and faded. “Everything’s the same here,” as one character puts it, “but it’s just a little worse.”

He might just as well be describing Finland – or at least Finland as it has been portrayed by its unofficial chronicler, the filmmaker Aki Kaurismäki, whose hilariously bittersweet visions of Helsinki’s downtrodden demi-monde have remained so consistent over the years that you can barely hold a candle between his third feature Shadows In Paradise, released way back in 1986, and his latest, Lights in The Dusk, made two decades later.
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Both films feature a working-class antihero down on his luck, romance, social injustice, crime, a classic car, a nostalgic soundtrack, lots of smoking and drinking, and drolly understated dialogue – although the same might in fact be said of many other Kaurismäki films. Yet while they bear a striking family resemblance to each other, they are like nothing made by anyone else (with the exception of Werner Herzog’s Stroszek and the early works of Jim Jarmusch). Kaurismäki is a true original, endlessly championing his underdog characters against whatever fate can throw at them, and always finding it in his heart to reward them (and us) with a glimpse of hope – and love – at the end. Comedy rarely comes so bleak, and depression is rarely so funny.

In a key scene in Shadows In Paradise, Nikander (Matti Pellonpää) and Ilona (Kati Outinen) find themselves barred from an upmarket restaurant by the snooty maitre d’. Nikander is an ex-butcher now working as a garbage collector, and his one chance of advancement in life has recently died along with his only friend and colleague. Ilona is a saleswoman who has been forced to move from one job to the next by the “merciless machine” of the market. At first Nikander’s attraction to Ilona may be barely requited – and their first date, spent in a grim, smoke-filled bingo hall, may hardly be a success – but Ilona will turn to Nikander when she finds herself in trouble with the law, and eventually their shared sense of social exclusion and loneliness will keep them together.

Shadows In Paradise is a stony-faced comedy of underclass solidarity, as Nikander, Ilona and Nikander’s friend Melartin (Sakari Kuosmanen) all watch out for each other when no one else will. These three awkward, taciturn characters defy all cliché, and even if the no-nonsense lovers end up sailing off not so much into the sunset as into the dreary grey mists of the Baltic Sea, you will still be there with them, hoping that they find a better future. For while this is hardly Kaurismäki’s best film, it gives the stale conventions of the rom com the dark flipside they need, while downsizing that genre’s normally bourgeois sensibilities into a class all its own.

It is truly a love story with a wristcutter’s pain at its heart – and like its isolated protagonist, Shadows In Paradise recycles discarded treasures from trash.
Reviewed by: Anton Bitel

2.19GB | 1 h 13 min | 1024×576 | mkv

https://nitroflare.com/view/F425FA36D44D010/Aki_Kaurismaki_-_(1986)_Shadows_in_Paradise.part1.rar
https://nitroflare.com/view/AABCABDA4C8DE07/Aki_Kaurismaki_-_(1986)_Shadows_in_Paradise.part2.rar
https://nitroflare.com/view/B2C164EEDBAAD67/Aki_Kaurismaki_-_(1986)_Shadows_in_Paradise.part3.rar

Language:Finnish
Subtitles:English

The post Aki Kaurismäki – Varjoja paratiisissa aka Shadows In Paradise (1986) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

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Somewhere in the tundra lives the worst rock and roll band in the world…. Aki Kaurismäki`s hilarious road movie follows the fortunes and misadventures of a struggling Siberian rock band, the Leningrad Cowboys.

A local promoter, stunned by the band`s lack of talent, advises them instead to try their luck in America. Accompanied by their autocratic manager, the Cowboys travel to New York, learning English on the plane. Sporting outsixe Quiffs, dark shades and outrageously long winkle-pickers, they are passed off as Americans. Jim Jarmusch, in a cameo role as a shifty car salesman, sells them an old Cadillac. The band strap their frozen bass player to the roof in a coffin full of beer, and head south….

2.32GB | 1 h 19 min | 1024×568 | mkv

https://nitro.download/view/8421F02D4FC1F74/Leningrad_Cowboys_Go_America.576p.mkv

Language:Finnish and English
Subtitles:English (forced), Finnish (forced), Finnish, Swedish, Norwegian, Danish

The post Aki Kaurismäki – Leningrad Cowboys Go America (1989) first appeared on Cinema of the World.