Laitakaupungin valot

Plot synopsis:
Koistinen (Janne Hyytiäinen) is a lonely nightwatchman tasked with guarding a shopping mall. He attempts to socialize, but is treated coldly by his manager and subjected to mocking by his colleagues. While he is drinking alone in a bar, he catches the eye of some criminals headed by Lindholm (Ilkka Koivula) who learn of his occupation. Koistinen's only human contact is the grill vendor Aila (Maria Heiskanen) to whom he outlines his plans of starting his own company.
While at work, Koistinen notices a dog left outside a pub without water. While he is taking a break, Mirja (Maria Järvenhelmi) approaches him, saying he seems lonely. They agree to go on a date together. Returning from his break, Koistinen meets a young boy in front of the pub and asks if he knows the owners of the dog. Despite the boy's warning, Koistinen confronts the owners in the pub and is beaten off-camera.
Koistinen and Mirja go on a date. They talk little, and at a concert Koistinen watches as Mirja goes dancing on her own with other men. Despite this, they agree to meet again. Koistinen returns to Aila's grill and talks about his evening. Insulted, Aila asks him to leave and closes shop. Meanwhile, Mirja meets with Lindholm for her payment and ridicules Koistinen. Lindholm informs his contacts of an "open-door day."
Koistinen seeks a loan to start his own business, but is harshly refused at the bank due to his insufficient education and lack of guarantors. Later, Mirja unexpectedly joins Koistinen while he is taking his rounds. While Koistinen explains the mall's security system, Mirja memorizes the security code he uses. She gives the code to Lindholm, who tells her to start cooling the fake relationship off.
Mirja meets Koistinen at his place, but abruptly leaves when he attempts to put his arm around her. Koistinen begins to drink heavily, and ends up at Aila's grill. Aila walks him home and puts him to bed.
At work, one of Koistinen's colleagues mockingly asks about his successes with women. Koistinen grabs the man, but stops himself from striking him and goes to his rounds. Mirja meets him and asks him to come and talk. Koistinen signs off and leaves with Mirja in his car. Mirja drugs Koistinen and passes his keys to one of Lindholm's contacts. Using Koistinen's keys and security code, the thieves rob a jewellery store at the mall.
The police question Koistinen, but he claims to have been alone and drunk. He is released due to lack of proof, but is fired from his job. On Lindholm's insistence, Mirja meets with Koistinen at his apartment once again to plant evidence. Koistinen notices her hiding the evidence, but does not stop her and lets himself be arrested by the police. He is sentenced to two years in prison.
Koistinen initially remains lonely in prison, tearing up a letter Aila sends him. Just as Koistinen begins to have some contact to other inmates, he is released a year early on parole. He finds lodgings at a night shelter and gets a job as a restaurant's dishwasher. He runs into Aila, but soon excuses himself. However, Aila comes to see him at the night shelter and asks about his plans for the future. When Koistinen says he plans to open a garage once he's back on his feet, she congratulates him for not losing hope. They agree to see each other again.
Koistinen sees Mirja and Lindholm at the restaurant where he is working, but does not confront them. Lindholm calls up the head waitress and tells about Koistinen's criminal record, which results in him being fired immediately. Koistinen gets a knife from the night shelter and returns to the restaurant. As Lindholm and Mirja are leaving, he attacks Lindholm, but only manages to cut his hand while being disarmed and subdued by Lindholm's thugs. The thugs offer to kill Koistinen, but Lindholm refuses, saying he is a businessman and not a murderer. The young boy who warned Koistinen earlier sees the thugs take him away and finds Aila. They discover the badly beaten Koistinen in the harbour, along with the dog Koistinen attempted to help earlier. Aila offers to get help but Koistinen asks her to stay. When she asks him not to die, Koistinen replies "I won't die yet" and puts his hand on hers.

Tags: neo noir

Review:
This is the third film in Kaurismäki's "Helsinki Trilogy" (the others are Drifting Clouds (1996) and The Man Without a Past (2002)) While I haven't seen the first, this film shares many thematic and formal elements with the second film, and I enjoyed it just as much.Koistinen is a lonely security guard who is ignored by his co-workers; that is, when he's not being teased by them.
Whatever it is, from the first frame, you know the director loves this sad sack and wants us to love him too.The films of the Helsinki Trilogy all deal with people on the margins, and it's clear that Kaurismäki's sympathies lie with the common people and not with those whose success or power has dehumanized them.
He is an isolated security guard and his story is one of cruel deception and eventual, utter downfall.Though Koiskinen's slicked-back hairstyle wouldn't seem fashionable outside of a Forties gangster film, he's really not a bad-looking guy; he just isn't a leading man.
Aila (Maria Heiskanen), the woman who cares about Koiskinen, who runs a refreshment stand in a vacant lot, he has little use for.Kaurismäki's sequences of scenes are as bold and assured as they are ironic.
This film has the squirming life of a pool full of sharks devouring carp.Laitakaupungin Valot, called Les lumières du faubourg or "suburban lights" in its French release and Lights in the Dusk in Canada, is in fact a coolly ironic reference to Charlie Chaplin's City Lights.
It is a devastating finale to Kaurismäki's "Loser Trilogy," which began with Drifting Clouds and continued with A Man without a Past.
Lights in the Dusk is another in the series of movies about Finnish life that contain the same elements; deadpan dialog, subtle humor, stubborn protagonists, semi-happy endings.
However, it's an acquired taste, not for everyone.Our anti-hero is a security guard, caught up in a criminal plot, ultimately taken advantage of by a beautiful femme fatale but redeemed by the love of a good woman.
That sounds like a simple plot, but as seen in the movie it's anything but simple.I've seen references to a trilogy, mentioning this film along with Man Without A Past and Drifting Clouds.
Director Aki Kaurismaki may do well to bare this in mind before embarking on his next languid look at sad-faced Finns moving in somnambulistic circles through the streets of Helsinki.Perhaps considering JUHA and MAN WITHOUT A PAST too fast-paced, Kaurismaki slows down the action in LIGHTS IN THE DARK to a snail's pace.
Despite making me wonder if Kaurismaki is playing it safe by recycling the same ideas, his films are often like comfort food and it would take a lot to make me sick of macaroni and cheese.
Compared to normal Hollywood movies I still enjoy Kaurismäki's films, but this is definitely not one of his best ones.One of the biggest problems of this film is the director's attitude towards his main character.
That's not the problem, but Kaurismäki doesn't offer a minimum of possible explanations to Koistinen's behaviour.I don't expect a complete interpretation of his work by a director or by an author, but as a viewer of a film or as a reader of a book you need at least some information to start at.
Now, the ending chapter is out in the form of Laitakaupungin Valot, a story of loneliness, betrayal and sacrifice.I read the script of this film when it was going to production, and saw the result at the Finnish premiere last night.
The end result is shallow and unfinished, despite all its potential.The story is straightforward enough: a security man, lonely and bullied, meets a femme fatale, who sets him up for his gullibility and loyalty.
The course of the story is clear from the beginning to the inevitable end; indeed, Kaurismäki reveals the whole story in his synopsis of the film.The femme fatale, a central figure and most controversial character, remains shallow despite her potential.
None of them have any good qualities, there's nothing to grasp and like, or even understand.The third problem is the world Kaurismäki paints: his image of Finland, stylistic fifties, the one through which audiences abroad have learned to see us.
Never mind that you have no new ideas and that the most your film does is deliver the 'good old feeling' everyone expects.That's a fate Kaurismaki seems not to have been able to avoid with his Lights in the Dusk.
No real suspense, only mindless clichés about a totally hapless main character (no, this is not irony on the film's part, guys, this is just the 'good-old-Kaurismaki-feeling' we yearn for and it only seems to work because his other films were enjoyable on their own).
Kaurismaki's Lights in the Dusk (Laitakaupungin Valot)Viewed at the 2007 Nordic Film Festival in Rouen.
If "Là-bas", Chantal Ackerman's spare study of nothingness at the 2007 Nordic Film Festival in Rouen was "experimental" the word which applies to Aki Kaurismaki's "Lights in the Dusk" is "Minimalist" -- to the MAX!
~~ Kaurismaki has always been known for showing no more than what is absolutely necessary to make a story point in his spare but compassionate studies of Finnish losers in Helsinki, but in this film he distills it down to the very nittiest-of-gritty.
"Lights in the Dusk" (or Shadows in the Slums) tells the story of the misadventures of a handsome but totally alienated security guard (actor Janne Hyytiainen as '"Koistenin") and his ill-fated romance with the beautiful moll of a sinister local gangster.
This is the final installment of the directors Finland Trilogy focusing on low-class Finnish losers, the other two being "Drifting Clouds" 1996 and "The Man without a Past", 2002, which won the Grand Prix at Cannes.
"Laitakaupungin Valot" is the kind of picture where, if you blink, you've missed a whole important plot point, but it's also an exceptional treat for those who have followed Aki's career over the years -- like a special desert at the end of a long feast.
LAITAKAUPUNGIN VALOT by Aki Kaurismaki, "Lights in the Dusk", 2006.
Viewed at the 2007 Rouen Nordic Film Festival where, if Chantal Ackerman's spare study of nothingness was "experimental" the word which applies to Aki Kaurismaki's "Lights in the Dark" (Finnish title) (LAITAKAUPUNGIN VALOT) is "Minimalist" -- to the MAX!
Kaurismaki has always been known for showing no more than what is absolutely necessary to make a story point in his spare but compassionate studies of Finnish losers in Helsinki, but in this film he distills it down to the very nittiest-of-grit.
"Lights in the Dudk" (or Shadows in the Slums) tells the story of the misadventures of a handsome but feckless security guard and his ill-fated romance with the beautiful moll of a sinister local gangster.
This is the kind of picture where, if you blink, you've missed a whole important plot point, but it's also an exceptional treat for those who have followed Aki's career over the years -- like a special desert at the end of a long feast.
Released in 2006, Aki Kaurismäki's film LAITAKAUPUNGIN VALOT (released internationally as Lights in the Dusk), completes a loose trilogy of films that deal with underdogs, employ similar colour palettes and are set in a strange fantasy Finland where the social divisions and rock music of the 1950s have persisted into the present day.The film is concerned with the sufferings of Koistinen (Janne Hyytiäinen), a security guard who is not just neglected by his coworkers and society, but eventually set up by femme fatale Mirja (Maria Järvenhelmi) for a jewelry heist.
Prominent supporting roles are Lindholm (Ilkka Koivula), the mastermind of the criminal operation, and Aila (Maria Heiskanen), a hot dog vendor who seems to be Koistinen's only contact with the world, though "friend" would be too strong a word.The previous two entries in Kaurismäki's "Losers" trilogy -- DRIFTING CLOUDS and THE MAN WITHOUT A PAST, had their characters knocked about, but ultimately they pulled through and found happiness.
The cruelty directed at Koistinen is more brutal and the ending, while hinting at something positive, is ambiguous and painful to watch.Kaurismäki has really come to repeat himself, maintaining not just the same atmosphere from film to film, but even reusing stock scenes like a man being beaten and left for dead at the docks, prison labour and awkward dates.
I am not a fan of movies about people who live their lives in a pointless way, and when given the options to act sit like zombies and let the river of life float them downstream.
If the style was not done intentionally the director, Aki Kaurismaki, needs to be prevented from ever making another film in his life.
The director also seems to think that chain-smoking characters will somehow add some interest and style to his film.I waited patiently thinking that perhaps there was some twist coming (like the security guard had actually planned the whole thing).
"Laitakaupungin valot" is the last episode for the Aki Kaurismäki's Finland trilogy whose previous items were "Drifting Clouds" and "The Man Without a Past".The main character of the latest installment is a lonely and badly treated night guard Koistinen who in many ways is the male version of Iris from "The Match Factory Girl".
However, you can also certainly absorb yourself into the story of the male main character of "Laitakaupungin valot" and feel empathy for him.In this movie Kati Outinen does a flash-like cameo appearance as the clerk of a Cassa shop, and the performers of the bigger parts are quite well accustomed to the Kaurismäki's style of film-making.
Janne Hyytiäinen, who plays the main part, is also very believable in his role, although I do not consider him to be quite as magnificent "silent film actor" as Kati Outinen was in previous parts of the trilogy.The music of "Laitakaupungin valot" deserves a special mention, since with it the aesthetic style of Kaurismäki really flowers.
What comes to the other content, there is a plenty of Kaurismäki's trade-mark dry humor at the beginning of the movie, especially at the coffee shop scene, but when the film goes on its comedic currents almost totally vanish and the dramatic values take over.
After Drifting Clouds (1996) and the Oscar-nominated The Man Without a Past (2002), Aki Kaurismäki ends his "losers" trilogy with what appears to be his most cynical film to date.Lights in the Dusk (the Finnish title, Laitakaupungin valot, is inspired by Chaplin's City Lights) is a quite unusual Kaurismäki movie, mostly because of the absence of his regular acting ensemble (the exception being Kati Outinen in a blink-and-you-miss-it cameo, reminiscent of Shadows in Paradise).
Lights in the Dusk finished a trilogy started by Drifting Clouds (1996) and The Man without a Past (2002).
His films are about the inevitable marginality of these kind of people who have no job and no home.Basically, this is the story: A lonely watchman in Helsinki becomes acquainted with a woman who then turns out to be a real femme fatale who works for a small Russian crime organization.
After a desperate attempt to revenge, he gets beaten up and ends up lying on the ground at the dock.Aki Kaurismäki is a true minimalist and one can clearly see the influence of Robert Bresson and Jean-Luc Godard in his work.
About the Finnish agony, and he often focuses his expressionistic eye on one character who in Lights in the Dusk happens to be Koistinen, played by Janne Hyytiäinen.
The title of the film comes from the classic City Lights and just as Chaplin's tramp so does the protagonist of Lights in the Dusk try to find a crack in the world from which he could crawl in.
For the first time the man reacts with something else than silence and, therefore, his shell starts to collapse.Lights in the Dusk isn't a pessimistic film.
Here is a quick review.Lights in the Dusk is the third film in a trilogy directed by Aki Kaurismäki.
A few weeks ago I rented the second film in this trilogy, The Man Without A Pasta charming film about an outcast that deals with loneliness, love and his place in the world.Lights in the Dusk also focuses on an outcasta lonely security guard who works nights in Helsinki.
Clocking in at a pithy one-hour-and-fourteen minutes, "Lights in the Dusk" is an existentialist Finnish comedy in which a mild-mannered night watchman, who seems to be living in a world of his own, becomes an unwitting patsy in a jewelry-store robbery when he opens up to a woman who has seemingly taken a romantic interest in him.As the much put-upon working man who allows a femme fatale to trick him into doing her dirty work for her, Janne Hyytiaien gives a marvelously deadpanned performance that perfectly reflects the spare, archly humorous world director Aki Kaurismaki has created for the film.
In a way, he reminds us a bit of Meursault from Camus' "The Stranger," a man so emotionally detached from the world around him that his actions aren't always explicable to those of us who are residing in the "real world" watching him perform them.Though it is a difficult film to pigeonhole, "Lights in the Dusk" is a modest, unassuming work that touches both the heart and the funny bone in roughly equal measure..
'Lights in the Dusk' is a wonderful film from many aspects, and yet the lack of ambition of his principal hero seems to somehow overcome the whole atmosphere to an extent that it defies the logic, at least for the non-Finn viewer.
The black and cynical humor in his Leningrad Cowboys series seems to have been overtaken here by plain despair.The hero of the film Koistinen (we never know his first name) is the loneliest man on Earth.
Lights in the Dusk is an odd little animal, a film that gives you archetypes of a genre and delivers a story it insists you find interesting before branching off into something else and then ending in a manner that, at least I, found abrupt.
The title of the film is Laitakaupungin valot, Finnish for what I can only presume to be 'Lights in the Dusk'.
Given the final shot of the film, Finnish director Aki Kaurismäki seems to stay true to his word and the film's title but I felt short changed; as if there was something else that could've developed once the film had ended to do with a psychological study of absolute no hope, rather than giving us what we get (which is genre film-making) and then finishing on an ambiguous note to do with us asking 'what happens next'?
The next minute, he's showing her around where he works and this-is-this-and-that-is-that and the scene has finished.The hapless lead is Koistinen (Hyytiäinen), a security guard at a Helsinki jewellers doing the night rounds more often than not.
Ever think about when you last watched a really iffy heist film like '3000 Miles to Graceland' and you see any number of security guards or police officers getting shot or taking some other flack during the robbery?
Koistinen and Mirja are not two of the most charismatic lead characters in a film ever but their relationship is never even 'so' in the first place so whatever communication or fondness there is will always be a result of Mirja's larger goal which is related to her employers larger goal.To say whether the heist happens and what happens next feels like a crude spoiler.
This is a man's 'prior tragedy' event in any Hollywood film you like stretched to 80 odd minutes and for pulling that off you have to commend the director.
In a sense, anyone that watches this are playing a 'Koistinen' role themselves with the director as the seducer, leading you down a route of the noir and of the 'hesit' genre before branching off to look at the results of said event and then ending on a distorting note leaving you wanting more.
Janne Hyytiäinen and Maria Järvenhelmi do well as Koistinen and Mirja; their characters may have zero chemistry between them but somehow it suits the cold feel of the film.
While this film lacks exciting action, laughs and likable characters it is worth watching if only because it is so different from typical Hollywood fare; also at seventy eight minutes it doesn't waste much time if it turns out you don't like it..
Like Kaurismaki's two previous films, 'Drifting Clouds' and 'Man Without a Past', this conjures up a world of despair, but shot in the Formica tones of a Doris Day comedy, without the emollient presence of incidental music.
Plot: A lonely security guard is manipulated by a femme fatale working for a gang of jewel thievesThis is a film that is so bleak that it actually becomes very funny, in a slightly hysterical sort of way.
Much of the film is taken up with long silences (in which the characters smoke), songs being played in full, and lengthy shots (check out the one of a card game in the gangster's den, where the femme fatale vacuums the carpet).
The femme fatale had one of the worst complexions I've ever seen powdered over on a leading lady; a metaphor, perhaps, for her soul.Unfortunately, the story did not have the holding power of the earlier "The Man Without A Past," one of my all-time favorite movies.
Lights in the Dusk is not among Aki Kaurismaki's very best films, but is a good addition to his oeuvre.
The movie is about Koistinen, a thirty-something security guard who is portrayed as the definition of a loser.
The problem with the movie is that Kaurismaki's has become too mannerist a filmmaker: the film is full of his usual quirks; for example, Koistinen and the two women he is involved with never made eye contact, as the actors are told to made a blank stare when they talk to each other.
As usual in Kaurismaki's films, the music is great: the movie starts and ends with two tangos by the great Carlos Gardel: Volver and El Dia Que me Quieras.