Most critics say one of Aki Kaurismäki's trademarks is the way he ends his movies: the epilogue is generally happy, but with an underlying sad feel to it. The Match Factory Girl shows an exemplary use of that technique.
This heartbreaking tragedy features Kaurismäki's muse, Kati Outinen, in a career-best performance: she plays Iris, a poor, lonely woman with no real life. She has a boring job in a match factory (the opening sequence of the film, showing how things go on there, is reminiscent of the director's debut, Crime and Punishment), lives with her detached mother (Elina Salo) and cruel stepfather (a revelatory turn from Esko Nikkari), and has no friends at all.
One night she decides to go out and "have fun". Things go bad right from the start: when she picks a dress to wear, her step-dad slaps her in the face, coldly insulting her. She gets picked up by a guy in a bar, only he thinks she's a prostitute (there we go again) and dumps her the following morning, completely ignoring her subsequent pleas for help when she finds out she's pregnant. At this point, enough is enough: Iris decides it's payback time for all the bad things that have ever happened to her.
What happens next, I can't reveal. I can only say it's in the last part of the film that we get to understand what "sad happy ending" means. the conclusion is positive in a way (a very ironic, cruel, painful one), but we find ourselves overwhelmed by the tragic undertones. Even though we cheer for Outinen's character, we realize things can't possibly go well from now on. That's why the last chapter of the "workers" trilogy is the most gripping: underneath its ironic facade lies a carefully crafted study of human existence at its most extreme. They don't make many films like this anymore...
This heartbreaking tragedy features Kaurismäki's muse, Kati Outinen, in a career-best performance: she plays Iris, a poor, lonely woman with no real life. She has a boring job in a match factory (the opening sequence of the film, showing how things go on there, is reminiscent of the director's debut, Crime and Punishment), lives with her detached mother (Elina Salo) and cruel stepfather (a revelatory turn from Esko Nikkari), and has no friends at all.
One night she decides to go out and "have fun". Things go bad right from the start: when she picks a dress to wear, her step-dad slaps her in the face, coldly insulting her. She gets picked up by a guy in a bar, only he thinks she's a prostitute (there we go again) and dumps her the following morning, completely ignoring her subsequent pleas for help when she finds out she's pregnant. At this point, enough is enough: Iris decides it's payback time for all the bad things that have ever happened to her.
What happens next, I can't reveal. I can only say it's in the last part of the film that we get to understand what "sad happy ending" means. the conclusion is positive in a way (a very ironic, cruel, painful one), but we find ourselves overwhelmed by the tragic undertones. Even though we cheer for Outinen's character, we realize things can't possibly go well from now on. That's why the last chapter of the "workers" trilogy is the most gripping: underneath its ironic facade lies a carefully crafted study of human existence at its most extreme. They don't make many films like this anymore...