Aki Kaurismäki concludes the ‘Loser’ trilogy he started with Drifting Clouds and The Man Without A Past with this taut tribute to Chaplin, Hitchcock, Fassbinder and the B-noir.
The plot follows an inevitable progression, as security guard Janne Hyytiäinen is duped by a femme fatale and only learns the value of a female fast-food vendor after he’s done time as the patsy in a jewel robbery. But the pleasures here lie in the tone and the visuals, with a mostly nostalgic soundtrack and lustrous photography reinforcing the melancholy that confines Hyytiäinen to an isolation he’s too wilfully introspective to escape. It may be self-conscious in places, but this is still textbook Kaurismäki.