The Match Factory Girl

Many analyses I've read of 1990's THE MATCH FACTORY GIRL cite the influence of Robert Bresson. Writer/director Aki Kaurismaki does employ a minimalistic style, placing the camera's focus on a series of insert shots.  And the camera barely moves at all.  The characters say very little, and their faces say less.  Iris, the title character who toils a deadening job and lives with her dour, television obsessed parents, reveals only a certain blankness, a void in response to the the nothingness around her.  But like everyone else in Helsinki and everywhere, she wants to be loved.

She tries.  She pays the rent and makes dinner for her mother and father.  When she finally spends a little on herself and buys a red dress, they call her a whore.  Iris (Kati Outinen) goes to bars and dancehalls and leaves alone, until the night she catches the stare of Aarne (Vesa Vierkko) and spends the night with him.  He leaves currency on his night table for her.  She had not made the connection.  She leaves her phone number and is distraught when he does not contact her.

So she pursues him, fetching another date that ends with his cruel, icy dressdown.   Then she learns she is pregnant...

THE MATCH FACTORY GIRL will then take some dark turns, all of which seem natural and logical for someone without hope.  How Iris reacts seems part of some cruel philosophical punchline, and Kaurismaki never fails to find humor in even the most grim moments here.  I wouldn't necessarily call his film a comedy, though.  I found it unrelentingly sad and bleak.  Having the actors internalize everything only makes it colder.  You could say that it is reflective of Finnish culture, but the impoverished, nowhere life in the shadows seems to point in only one direction, perhaps to an inevitable conclusion. 

The film is barely over an hour, but is so deliberate as to evoke not only the glacial pace of a Bresson but maybe even an Ozu or Dreyer film; these are compliments.  Part of Kaurismaki's genius is that he uses all of the elements - art direction, music, mise-en-scene - to bring to life something lifeless.  Never to mock or celebrate.  THE MATCH FACTORY GIRL almost feels like a silent film in its lack of dialogue, allowing much greater contemplation for those who take this journey.