AFS Selects: Aki Kaurismaki’s LE HAVRE

Written and directed by Aki Kaurismaki, Cinematography by Timo Salminen
Finland/France/Germany, 2011, distributed by Janus Films, color, 93 min.
Cast: André Wilms, Kati Outinen, Jean-Pierre Darroussin, Blondin Miguel, Little Bob, Jean-Pierre Leaúd
French with English subtitles

Doctor, trying to console a terminally ill woman: “Sometimes there are miracles.”
Patient: “Not in my neighborhood.”

True to his profound understanding of the barely-working class and even-more-marginalized job-seekers/dreamers, Finnish writer/director Aki Kaurismaki has created for his 16^th feature film a lovely story about aging artist-turned-bootblack Marcel Marx, his unassuming wife Arletty, a young African immigrant Idrissa, and the generally kind-hearted shopkeepers of a humble neighborhood of the northwestern French port city of Le Havre. Bothered by frequent news stories of desperate immigrants hidden in trucks, boats, or railroad cars, Kaurismaki shows a group of Gabonese men, women, and children discovered in a shipping container accidentally off-loaded in Le Havre rather than continuing on to England. Idrissa, an alert adolescent, escapes the immigration police and finds a hiding place near the docks. Once Marcel accidentally discovers him, the two inevitably  become attached, and the old man provides a small, steady, but unsentimental antidote to the inhumane treatment of immigrants so rife throughout Europe and the Americas. One little story, so much heart. But as proven in his previous films, Kaurismaki is not a romanticist or a melodramatist. He simply recognizes that the people most likely to help other downcast people are perhaps just one notch above being poor themselves. In the tidal wave of desperate immigrants washing over Europe, the director sees there are new people of all shades of black and brown who are tentatively putting one foot on the bottom rung of the economic ladder.

Marcel Marx (André Wilms) has lived the Bohemian life of an artist in Paris but now shines shoes in Le Havre. Both his first name and his previous career in the capital echo the name of the character that Wilms played in Kaurismaki’s other French film, LA VIE DE BOHEME (1992). Likewise no stranger to the Kaurismaki world, Kati Outinen plays Marcel’s wife Arletty, seemingly at ease with ironing, cleaning, cooking, and caring for her husband, whom she took in when he was virtually a bum on the street. Outinen has played rather joyless women with few hopes in various Kaurismaki films, most prominently in MAN WITHOUT A PAST (2002), MATCH FACTORY GIRL (1990), and SHADOWS IN PARADISE (1986). Her character’s name is a sly reference to the famous French actress/singer Arletty, best known for her major role in THE CHILDREN OF PARADISE (1946). These two veteran actors are joined by first-timer Blondin Miguel (Idrissa) and a wonderful cast of character actors, who would have looked right at home in the 1930s and 40s lyrical films of Jean Renoir, Rene Clair, Marcel Carne, and Marcel Pagnol, set in the provinces and exemplifying a love of life and humanity. The woman baker, the male grocer, and the female tavern owner provide delightful moments of kindness and humor throughout LE HAVRE, as they all help Marcel in various ways, especially after Idrissa comes into his life. So, too, do the Vietnamese man with a forged Chinese passport and Little Bob, an aged rock ‘n’ roller with a magnificent quiff of grey hair complementing his red motorcycle jacket. Playing himself, the actual “Little Bob” (born Roberto Piazza in Italy) has long been a fixture in Le Havre, where he honed his singing talents and rock persona in the 1970s and then appeared as a warm-up act for various English groups, including The Clash, The Sex Pistols, The Lords of the New Church, and The Stranglers.

But not everyone in LE HAVRE is so readily kind-hearted and generous. Inspecteur Henri Monet is darkly played by Jean-Pierre Darroussin, who has embodied other police detectives during his 30-year-career. He begins suspecting Marcel of aiding and abetting the young illegal immigrant after receiving phone calls from a very nosey neighbor, who has secretly observed the young boy at Marcel’s house. This is hauntingly familiar territory in French films, especially those set during the Nazi occupation when there would often be someone reporting the “presence of a Jew” at a neighbor’s address. Kaurismaki is drawing a bold “equals sign” between those evil snitches of the past and those of today – only the victims of their selfish gaze have changed, not the motivation. Cleverly the role of this denouncer is played by 66-year-old Jean-Pierre Leaúd, whose acting career blossomed in 1959 with his starring role as the adolescent Antoine Doinel, a runaway.

As always, Kaurismaki injects humor into lives and situations that might be unbearable otherwise. The stolid Marcel and Arletty epitomize the emotionless, restrained characters that Kaurismaki has in all his films. He is not quite as rigid as David Mamet in directing his actors into an almost wooden style of speaking, but you always know to expect a lot of staring, reticence, and hidden emotions in Kaurismaki’s characters. There’s often an extra beat or two before most replies. Their almost Buster Keatonish expressions (or lack thereof) allow for quiet, ironic humor.

Situations also add to the comedy. At the very beginning of the film, Marcel is so thankful that he collected payment for a shoeshine from a well-dressed man before he was shot dead (off-camera). In a hospital scene, one of Arletty’s friends is reading a story to her. Learning that it is from Franz Kafka’s first collection of short stories, Contemplation (1904-1912), should make us laugh in surprise (with a dab of horror).

Kaurismaki’s infallible ear for just the right music is certainly at work in LE HAVRE. There’s a wonderful pastiche of tragic love-songs from the 1920s and 30s sung by Damia (Marie-Louise Damien), a slow tango by French-Argentinean composer/singer Carlos Gardel, “Statesboro Blues” by Blind Willie McTell, contemporary French accordion music (Alain Chapelain), and two rockers by the aforementioned Little Bob. When asked about his inclusion of such eclectic music, Kaurismaki replied, “All the Finnish youngsters born in the late ’50s or early ’60s got American and English blues, rhythm and blues, and rock ’n’ roll from their mother´s milk.”

In that same interview for Filmmaker (19 October 2011), Damon Smith asked the director why he chose to set his film in France rather than his native Finland. Showing his sensitivity and sense of humor at the same time, Kaurismaki replied, “… I picked Le Havre after driving all the coast from Genoa to the Belgian border. The refugee problem (and the shame of their disgraceful treatment) is all European and it doesn’t really matter in which country the film is shot. Anyhow, it is clear that very few refugees are desperate or unlucky enough to end up in Finland.”

Using his longtime director of photography, Kaurismaki has once more achieved a crisp, colorful, carefully composed look for LE HAVRE. They are two men with a similar vision of the world appropriate for the story. As the director says, “I make the storytelling and frame the pictures, but Timo is almost totally free in lighting. But since we have worked together 30 years now there is no reason to even whistle anymore. The cooperation is quite automatic.” That is a situation most directors could pray for, but few have achieved. The visual irony in this primary-colored film is that until rather recently, Le Havre has been considered a rather gloomy, grey place. It also helps that Kaurismaki still insists on shooting his films on 35mm film stock because of the range of colors, hues, and tones, along with deep-focus clarity. He may choose to die or retire rather than make the digital shift.

The principal moment of joy in this film is that Arletty is proven wrong about there being no miracles in her neighborhood. With his deft hand at writing, casting, and directing, Aki Kaurismaki insures there are indeed miracles, especially when people open their hearts.

LE HAVRE was nominated for the Palme d’Or and won the International Film Critics’ FIPRESCI Prize at the 2011 Cannes Film Festival.

Go to Austin Film Society webpage for LE HAVRE, with Violet Crown opening date information and link.

Note: in November-December 2009 the Austin Film Society presented a series of five films by Aki Kaurismaki and co-sponsored with the Austin Lyric Opera a special screening of his LA VIE DE BOHEME. AFS Essential Cinema: Aki Kaurismaki, The Chilly Humorist of Finland.

Damon Smith interviewed Kaurismaki for Filmmaker (Oct 19, 2011)

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