Jornal da Mostra
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Edição:
Renata de Almeida e Leon Cakoff
Aki Kaurismäki brings trilogy on modern melancholy to a close, with solitude
“Drifting Clouds” was awarded the prize from the public at the 20th Mostra International Film Festival in São Paulo. The film following “The Man Without a Past” almost won the Cannes Festival in 2002, having lost out to Roman Polanski’s “The Pianist/ O Pianista”, winner of the Golden Palm, but singled out with two of the top prizes at the same festival: the Jury Prize and the Prize for Best Actress to actress Kati Outinen, a splendid professional from Kourismäki’s troupe, included in his films awarded retrospectives at the Mostra de São Paulo film festival.
The first part of the trilogy broached the tragedy of unemployment and its terrible psychological consequences on individuals. This tragicomic portrayal of one of the greatest contemporary social ills was already at the height of the narrative style of Kaurismäki, one of the greatest modern film makers – author of a minimalist language with characters from day-to-day life raised to the category of heroes of the resistance.
The second part of the trilogy was built on a surrealist narrative of a man who loses his memory following an attack, to deal with another terrible contemporary tragedy – namely, unemployment, the scourge of the unemployed.
“ Lights in the Dusk” that will bring the trilogy to a close seems to aim at the core of human scourges with the disturbances that are the result of solitude and melancholy once more wreaking havoc - this time in the person of a drifter who loses his job, his freedom and his dreams, on witnessing a crime and who, furthermore, becomes involved with the most unfeeling woman in cinema since Bette Davis’ character in “All About Eve”, by Joseph Mankiewicz (1950). Yet to be seen, with a great deal of expectation.
Translation into English: Clare Elizabeth Charity ( clarecharity@uol.com.br )
For further information:
www.festival-cannes.org
