"FALLEN LEAVES is a romance, but with a difference, Ansa (Pöysti) and Holappa (Vatanen) are two working-class lonesome souls in their late 30s or early 40s. She is a zero-hour contract employee in a supermarket and he is a sandblaster, neither manages to keep it for too long, but at least in Finland, they are not distressed about seeking a new job. As a matter of fact, distress is something one can hardly detect in Kaurismäki's corpus. No matter how dire and miserable the situations are, his actors's poker face remains immutably impenetrable, and unlike "a deadpan look", Kaurismäki's trademark expression betrays no self-consciousness. His "subtraction" of emotions through impassivity and stillness of the body language is an acquired taste, but in FALLEN LEAVES, it reaches a form of abstraction, a simplicity, as we watch Ansa and Holappa masterfully code their intentions and thoughts barely pulling a facial muscle, it is droll, but also amazingly candid. Both Pöysti and Vatanen are real finds, especially the former, accessorizing her performative reduction with an evocative aroma of tristesse and resilience."
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