Lights in the Dusk

Colour, 35 mm
Finland, 2006, 78 min
Section: Horizons

Synopsis

Screenwriter and director Aki Kaurismäki introduces the third part of his loose trilogy about drifters: while he told us a tale about unemployment in the film Drifting Clouds and portrayed homelessness in The Man Without a Past, the story Lights in the Dusk examines the theme of loneliness. The hero of the narrative is a man called Koistinen, who works the night shift as a guard for a Helsinki-based security firm. But then he ends up needing protection himself: the secure, daily routine of this taciturn man is severely disrupted by the arrival of the beautiful but ice-cold blonde Mirja, who breaks his heart and draws him into major crime. The other woman in Koistinen’s life is the inconspicuous Aila who wants to try and help him… A melancholic story about the quiet tragedy of human solitude, filmed in pure Kaurismäkian style. We will also detect inspiration from the silver screen in the unfeeling blonde Mirja, who rises to the surface from Hitchcock’s Vertigo.

About the director

Aki Kaurismäki (b. 1957, Orimattila, Finland) is one of Europe’s most distinguished directors; he is also involved in production via the company Villealfa, which he established with his brother Mika (also a director). In his stylised bitter-sweet tragicomedies, which regularly win awards at prestigious festivals, he focuses in particular on the fates of various outsiders and drifters from the fringes of society. Filmography (selection): Crime and Punishment (1983), Shadows in Paradise (1986), Hamlet Gets Business (1987), Ariel (1988), Leningrad Cowboys Go America (1989), The Match Factory Girl (1990), I Hired a Contract Killer (1991), Bohemian Life (1992), Take Care of Your Scarf, Tatiana (1993), Leningrad Cowboys Meet Moses (1994), Drifting Clouds (1996), Juha (1998), The Man Without a Past (2002), segments from the collections of stories Ten Minutes Older: The Trumpet, (2002) and Visions of Europe (2004). A special screening of his films was organised during the Karlovy Vary IFF in 1992.