Shadows in Paradise

A bad date at the bingo parlor: Kati Outinen and Matti Pellonpää

Aki Kaurismäki's Shadows in Paradise, from 1986, is the first distinctive Kaurismäki feature. Matti Pellonpää and Kati Outinen play Nikander and Ilona, a couple whose rocky romance we witness through the course of the film. Pellonpää ended up appearing in 18 Kaurismäki features and Outinen five. Most of the supporting cast reappear in Kaurismäki films multiple times. Along with his nascent stock company, almost all of the attributes of the filmmaker's work are fully formed and on display in Shadows in Paradise: a concern with the economic struggles and romantic travails of working class people, deadpan humor, and an unfussy visual style.

The jobs of Kaurismäki's character are central to their identities, a trait he shares with, of all people, Howard Hawks; another unfussy visual stylist. The credit sequence establishes Nikander's daily routine driving a trash truck and collecting garbage. It is a model of classical filmmaking in which there is not a wasted shot, something that holds true for the remainder of the film's scant 74 minutes. We glimpse multiple times that totem of the capitalist work place: the punch clock. Nikander and Ilona meet cute at her place of work, a supermarket where she works as a cashier. There, she utter her first magic words to Nikander, "37.20." Workplaces are shown to be cutthroat, but the director tosses off the message instead of beating the viewer over the head. As the manager of the supermarket says to Ilona when he lays her off, "A supermarket is a merciless machine." Worse is the fate of a co-worker of Nikander's who dreams of owning his own trucking concern and building a better future for himself. He drops dead of a heart attack on the job before those dreams can be fulfilled.

The world of Kaurismäki would be very bleak without the vein of humor he provides. The stoicism of his characters is pronounced to the point of absurdity. Compared to Kaurismäki, the characters in other Scandinavian films, like those of Joachim Trier, seem animated. During the course of their romance, Nikander is able to open up to Ilona about his meagre aspirations, but won't reveal to her his first name. He is an extremely diffident and clumsy Casanova. He takes her to a bingo parlor on their first date which almost immediately puts the kibosh on their relationship. His enticement for a second date is even worse: let's go see my institutionalized sister. What a card! Yet, Nikander's caveman straightforwardness eventually wins over Ilona. She briefly dallies with the manager of a department store, but ultimately decides she is not cut out to join the petit bourgeoisie. When Nikander threatens to punch out her new swain, she realizes she has found her true lug.

The other leavening agent in the dour films of Kaurismäki is his use of music, both on the soundtrack and in live performance. Kaurismäki loves to use rock music for his transitional scenes. The scenes of people in transit in Shadows in Paradise almost all feature blaring rock instrumentals. The live performances range from cocktail jazz in bourgeois haunts to the Schlager music that accompanies the working class drinking themselves to sweet oblivion at their haunts. It is the counterpoint to their life of toil, a brief respite until the workers trudge back to the salt mines. The pattern repeats in most of the best of Kaurismäki's work: Ariel, Fallen Leaves, The Match Factory Girl, La Vie de Boheme, Drifting Clouds, The Man Without a Past, and Le Havre.