I saw this at the 2007 Palm Springs International Film Festival and it's a drama that's so over the top that it's essentially a comedy and a parody of French New Wave films of the late 50's and early 60's. This is written, directed and produced by veteran Finnish filmmaker Aki Kaurismäki and beautifully shot by veteran cinematographer Timo Salminen with a wonderful production design from Markku Pätilä. This is the story of a lonely and picked upon security guard who we only know by his last name of Koistinen. He's a nice enough guy who's not bad looking but kind of short and wears slick backed greasy hair. He has no friends or girlfriends and fails to notice that the equally mousy hot dog vendor Aila has a crush on him. Koistinen doesn't fit in with the others at work and has plans to start his own security business. One day he meets the beautiful Mirja who befriends him with the premise of a possible unlikely relationship but she is the moll of a gangster named Lindholm and is only using Koistinen. All the characters play it extremely straight with very little emotion even when angered and never smile. I've never seen a film with so much smoking of cigarettes in it. Ashtrays are filled to the top and smoking is in virtually every scene. There are subtle comedic scenes throughout and I would probably need to see this a second time to catch ones I missed like when Mirja is vacuuming Lindholm's apartment. This is not a great film but it's different enough to be good and even though I only give it a 6.5 out of 10 I wouldn't mind seeing it again. This may even have the possibility of being a personal cult favorite of mine in years to come and my rating could go up.