Vladimir Rakhmanin reviews Aki Kaurismaki’s latest comedy…
Vladimir Rakhmanin
Staff Writer
Praise the Lord – not a single handheld camera shot in sight. If you’ve read my A Separation review, then you’ll know how much I despise films with a shaky camera. Yes, it gives off that ‘homemade indie’ feel, but once you look past that, it’s ugly and unprofessional, and when those words are used to describe your work in a medium that relies mostly on images, then you know you’re doing something wrong.
Fortunately, Le Havre skips this terrible, terrible trend, and gives us a warm and funny comedy that is an absolute joy to watch. Aki Kaurismaki is extremely confident in his skill as a filmmaker, and this results in some of the most gorgeous shots I’ve seen this year. Any frame of the film would make a great poster, and every single sequence is integral to the plot. The aesthetic is also noteworthy – the various shades of blue create a dreamy, fairy-tale like quality to the picture.
It’s also refreshing to see, for once, a comedy that doesn’t insult the audience’s intelligence. Take, for example, a sequence where the protagonist leaves a bag of food for a young refugee on the steps of the harbour. The shot centres on the small parcel, and is still for several seconds. Suddenly, we hear a sound in the background – something is rising from the water. Immediately, there’s a cut to the next scene. Now, the crux of this sequence was whether the boy trusts the main character, and the question of whether he will accept the food or not. By not showing us the boy, Kaurismaki maintains the mystery of the moment, while subtly suggesting that the young refugee accepted the food. And this just one example – the film is full of such beautifully constructed moments.
The comedic elements are also great, and much more subtle than what you might expect. There are no big ‘haha’ laughs (apart from a brilliant gag where the (white) main character pretends to be the albino brother of a black man), but the deadpan quirky tone manages to be hilarious in itself. Even though the director is Finnish, this is primarily a French production, and this French flavour can be felt throughout the entire picture, making it feel original.
As you may have noticed by now, I liked Le Havre a lot. It does, however, have its problems. My main gripe was with the plot. In theory, it sounds very interesting – an unlikely pairing up of an old shoeshine and a young refugee, and the old man’s attempt to send the boy to London to see his mother. Unfortunately, I personally felt that emotionally the story falls a little flat. I’m not exactly sure why exactly I felt this way – most probably because the deadpan wit overrode the majority of the ‘tearjerker’ moments. I also felt that a subplot about a charity concert felt a little bit forced, like the director just wanted to include a local celebrity solely for authenticity in his film – it feels a little jarring when compared to the rest of the production.
Even with these flaws, Le Havre remains a great film – it is flawlessly executed and has a great original vision, and even if it does feels a little hollow at times, it is still very much worthy of your time.
