Sorry, this movie sucks

I don't have all the words right now but this film is a work of art.

This film is so real. It treats its characters with so much care and sensitivity.

One of the film's great tricks is that, for a time, you think it will go down a rabbit hole of unrealistic glorification.

The story is told using very little dialog and has almost zero energy. It concerns a young and not particularly vivacious nor attractive young lady. She works, rents space in her mother's inhospitable house, has no friends and seems to exist instead of live. And, the performance is rather zombie-like. After spending much of the film being mistreated by others, she buys rat poison and gives it to people--several of which actually seem to deserve it (at least to a degree). Then, the police arrest her and the film ends. According to the intro by Turner Classic Movies, Roger Ebert loved this film. It also has a reasonably high overall score of 7.6. I cannot understand either, as the film is about as enjoyable to watch as films showing clips of war atrocities! To say it's unpleasant is a definite understatement but this alone is not a problem--it's also a film that, at least to me, seems pretty pointless. This can also be said of some of director Kaurismaki's other films, such as "Ariel".Strange and certainly not for most tastes.

I found this film to be delightfully minimalistic, Iris' innocence is completely shattered by the harsh reality of life as she grows into a woman.I thoroughly enjoyed this film and it has definitely become one of my favorites, the exploration of a working class girl who is expected to provide for her parents and receive nothing in return is expertly done. The minimal dialog and focus on the dreariness of Iris' working class life is a very effective narrative.Iris is a simple working class woman who has simple working class desires, she searches for a partner in life and love only to be at first rejected, the chewed up and spat out by a cold unfeeling upper class middle aged balding man.When life gives us lemons most of us hope that there is something better out there, we try to improve ourselves even through the harshness and selfishness of our fellow human beings we see a light. Why do we do this? Iris refuses to answer this question, or even contemplate it.I recommend this film without hesitation, Enjoy!more reviews @ filmstvandlife.wordpress.com

The Match Factory Girl (1990) was the final part of director Aki Kaurismäki's informal trilogy of films dealing with the day-to-day grind of working class characters on the fringes of society. The first two instalments were Shadows in Paradise (1986), in which a lonely bin man begins a relationship with a no-nonsense shop assistant in the hope of finding an escape from his repetitive, directionless existence, and Ariel (1988), wherein an unemployed man sets out for the bright lights of Helsinki and finds himself caught up in a series of delightfully picaresque adventures. For me, The Match Factory Girl was the least interesting and least successful of the three; lacking the broader elements of comedy found in the first film or the skillful story-telling and unconventional directorial touches of the second. It is still worth experiencing, and indeed, the rest of the reviews here are filled with glowing praise and rapturous acclaim, but for me, it simply failed to captivate me like many of Kaurismäki's other, more ambitious projects.The film is typical of the director's idiosyncratic style, with flat, deadpan performances, minimalist dialog, simplistic storytelling and an interesting juxtaposition between drab, naturalistic production design and warm cinematography. There are also the usual Kaurismäki preoccupations with 50's iconography, the use rock and roll music and melodramatic popular song to both punctuate and comment upon the story as it unfolds, and the uncomfortable moments of contemplative silence that propel the story without the usual need for dialog and character interaction. Indeed, this would seem to be one of the main concerns of The Match Factory Girl, with the lack of communication between the characters pushing the film into a darker territory that we might not usually expect. I don't think it is handled quite as well as it could have been, and indeed, at times felt reminiscent of the director's first film, the contemporary-set adaptation of Crime and Punishment (1983). Like Crime and Punishment, The Match Factory Girl opens with a repetitive and mechanical montage showing the central character's work, as a lump of wood is cut down, filed, processed and sorted through machine after machine, until a single file of little tiny matches pass on a conveyor belt before being boxed and sorted by the shy and dowdy Iris.The central performance from Kati Outinen is as good as you could expect from Kaurismäki's work, filled with empathy and a heartbreaking pathos that permeates the very centre of this sad and tragic tale. What most impresses us about the actress is her ability to suggest so much about the character without the use of predictable dialog; with her monotonous daily routine and lack of any kind of joy or colour at both work and home reflected in her face, movements and body language. Her most lengthy piece of dialog is heard in voice over, as she dictates a letter that she is writing to a man that she has recently had a one night stand with, and hopes that he might want to get in touch with her, not only for her own sake, but the sake of the baby that she is carrying. It is a completely heartbreaking sequence, and the only occasion wherein we get a sense of Iris as an intelligent and bright young woman able to express her thoughts and feelings eloquently. Few of the other characters in the film say more than two or three lines of dialog throughout the comparatively short sixty-odd minute running time, which seems to simply reinforce the uncomfortable and tragic loneliness at the centre of this character's life.However, where the film failed to work for me was in the presentation of the last ten to fifteen minutes, in which the emphasis on social-realist clichés and Kaurismäki's typically deadpan approach to character and drama gave way to a darker aspect that I felt was underdeveloped. Some have drawn comparisons with this film to Michael Haneke's similarly cold examinations into social dissatisfaction and cultural alienation in films like The Seventh Continent (1989) and 71 Fragments of a Chronology of Chance (1994), particularly in the way in which Kaurismäki uses the relentless background chatter of radio reports and TV news footage of the escalating violence of the protests in Beijing and the Tiananmen Square incident to foreground the narrative, whilst simultaneously foreshadowing later events and the eventual theme of defiance. However, at only a fraction over an hour in length, these ideas felt unfinished and somewhat rushed, with the really interesting notions of the film only really coming to our attention during the third and final act.The ending is no doubt an ironic swipe at Hollywood film-making, in which the emphasis seems to be on tying together loose ends and closing the book on the very last page. Here, Kaurismäki gives us an ending that suggests so much without ever spelling things out. It's a nice touch, in keeping with his usual approach to storytelling, but again, for me, felt somewhat underdeveloped. Other viewers haven't had such problems, but having arrived at this film after two of my very favourite Kaurismäki films, Hamlet Goes Business (1987) and Ariel, both of which I consider to be early masterpieces, I probably expected too much. Regardless, The Match Factory Girl is an interesting enough film from Kaurismäki, one that shows the continuation of his typical approach to cinema and his various thematic concerns - and one that is certainly worth experiencing, if only for the unconventional lead performance from Kati Outinen - but one that I also feel is something of less successful retread of Crime and Punishment and Shadows in Paradise.

Where to begin telling about this film? Throwing imaginary roses to Kaurismäki who has yet again showed all what a fantastic creator of films he really is?.No one can as he describe Finnish culture in such a deep and sensitive, yet rough, way. He touches the string of our culture, our way of thinking and behaving in this special "silent" way as only he masters. In his films talking isn't done by words only but surely there's plenty of communication! This film is beyond doubt my personal favorite (also the lastest film by Kaurismäki, Mies Ilman Menneisyyttä, is totally fabulous!!) because there's not much dialogue (which we Finns aren't too keen of somehow) but there's plenty of meaning, plenty of human tragedy (which we also seem to be fond of!) and also a hint from Kaurismäki himself that certain things maybe could be different but all in all everything comes down to the quetion of culture and indeed Finnish culture is different from most other cultures especially in Scandinavia.Finns are often perceived as totally without oral skills almost not being able to talk however this is a fatal mistake to believe in. Finns just don't say anything if it's not necessary!! Why babble with no reason, why chat if it's not necessary..that's also why such a thing as the international wellknown concept of smalltalk is practically unknown here in Finland. It makes most Finns feel uneasy to talk if there's nothing real to talk about. But don't make the conclusion that Finns don't have feelings (even very deep ones!) and thoughts; that would be a fatal mistake. Finns are in everso many ways such a serious people that for most foreigners it looks like there's some sort of national depression going on but on the other hand when Finns party then they really party...Life here in Finland is simple although also hypermodern; it's two "worlds" living side by side and exactly this fact can be difficult for anyone from outside Finland to comprehend because it seems so weird, almost even awkward. What makes a Finn happy...well, a little wooden house by the lake to go to in the summer, your own sauna (which there's plenty of here), a long and everlasting relationship and a cosy home...nothing fancy is high on the list of finnish "dreams of happiness"..maybe it sounded as I would generalize but sometimes it's necessary to make your point of view clear to "foreigners" who've never visited Finland.The film itself shows a lot of how Finland still is...what things are all about; it contains strong emotions although it might not seem so at first. To some the film might even seem boring but beyond all those visible things there's a whole world of unsaid and in this particular film also undone things. In a stange way it contains as well the deepest seriousness as humour even though it is quite invisible to the eye. And however strange it may sound the film contains also love and deep passion; the scene where "Satumaa" is being played (just before Iris is picked up by the police) says it all! That's concequence, justice, love and real passion all in one small scene.Maybe one needs to be a Finn (or a true Fennofile) to get something real out of watching this film but indeed it is worthwhile and if you're gonna buy it do please buy it on DVD because if you like it (and you definately will) a VHS won't last for that many replays...So watch it and get wiser on Finnish culture; I give it all the stars possible, it really is a masterpiece of the very rare. It really is a film with a meaning and it surely has a message to all of us.Yet again "Bravo Kaurismäki" for placing Finland on the filmic worldmap...