Studies in Loneliness: 'All of Us Strangers' and 'Fallen Leaves'

2 films 1 theme.

Fallen Leaves, the latest offering from critically acclaimed writer/director Aki Kaurismäki, was the winner of the Jury Prize at the 2023 Cannes Film Festival, and is Finland’s official entry for this year’s Best Foreign Language Academy Award. It has been described as “understated” or “deadpan,” which is a bit like calling Rip Taylor “extroverted” - I mean, it’s not not true.

Set in a dreary version of Helsinki where everyone seems to have been both lobotomized and trained in the art of irony - like 130,000 square miles of free health clinics populated exclusively by iterations of the title character from Daria - Fallen Leaves is, on paper at least, a romantic comedy about two blue collar people finding love in an otherwise-rotten world.

And it is a rotten world: Ansa (Alma Pöysti) loses multiple jobs for unfair reasons, and is so strapped for cash that she has to steal expired food and keep all her electronics unplugged when she’s not using them, while Holappa (Jussi Vatanen) loses multiple jobs because he’s an alcoholic, and is so strapped for cash that he usually lives in a workers’ dormitory, sharing a room with other men. If Fallen Leaves has profundity to offer, it’s in the way it posits love as the exploited working class’ only true chance of happiness: not only are Ansa and Holappa’s places of work less-than-awesome, but the movie is lousy with scenes of people listening to radio reports about the war in Ukraine, as if to remind them that if even if they did win the lottery or something, they’d still be existentially screwed (which might be more effective if the movie also included references to climate change - the war in Ukraine will hopefully end some day, but at this point, global warming is coming for us all no matter what). For that reason, the movie is mostly devoid of color until the final shot, when the couple literally walks off into the sunset.

Fallen Leaves is, truly, a wisp of a movie - mercifully brief (81 minutes) and not entirely unpleasant, but nothing to write home about. Despite its overriding philosophical ennui, Kaurismäki refuses to give his story stakes or conflict: both characters repeatedly find new means of employment with such ease that whatever money problems they have never really become a big deal, most of the things that keep the would-be lovers apart are acts of fate (a lost phone number, an unfortunate accident, etc.) that they could not control and that therefore teach us nothing about them, and even addiction is shockingly-easy to overcome. While the sudden injection of color at the end is certainly pointed, every single shot is static, and some contrast - say, a hand-held shot at a particularly emotional moment - might have improved the film both visually and viscerally.

Kaurismäki doesn’t seem that interested in contrast, though - as I said before, every single character speaks with identical dry mannerisms. It’s a bit like watching an Aaron Sorkin movie as performed by actors on barbiturates. You could tell one of these somnambulants that their mothers were decapitated in a horrible accident or that they’ve just been anointed King and Queen of Finland and they’d have roughly the same reaction (Wes Anderson characters seem over-caffeinated by comparison).

It’s never clear why these two like one another so much, or, for that matter, why they can’t meet other people should this relationship fail. Reviews of the film insist that Ansa and Holappa are both lonely when we first meet them, but how they made that inference I could not tell you, because a) they both have friends and social lives, and b) no one in the movie is allowed to emote ever, at all, even the tiniest bit, so what the fuck anyone is feeling at any given moment is often a mystery solvable only by dialogue.

Fallen Leaves is, in other words, the perfect movie for senior citizens whose pacemakers do not allow for too much excitement and those with severe emotional disorders who get anxiety from the “Will they or won’t they?” elements of traditional rom-coms like Anyone But You. Those in search of more vigorous intellectual and emotional stimulation would be better served staying home and reorganizing their closet or, if they’re feeling really saucy, doing laundry without fabric softener.

Tonally, Fallen Leaves could not be more different from director and co-writer Andrew Haigh’s All of Us Strangers - but they’re both about humans swimming against the current of loneliness.

All of Us Strangers follows Adam (Andrew Scott, top-notch as always), a solitary screenwriter working on a script about his parents (Jamie Bell and Claire Foy), who died in a car crash when he was a boy. Returning to his childhood home for the first time in decades, he’s more than a little surprised to find his folks still living there. They haven’t aged and they’re thrilled to see him and learn all about what his life has become in their absence. Concurrently, Adam begins a romance with a neighbor, Harry (Paul Mescal) - his first such relationship in quite some time - the basic idea being that his newfound ability to find closure with his parents emboldens him to open his heart yet again.

Between the two films, All of Us Strangers is the far more gratifying and insightful study of modern alienation. A true psychological autopsy, it ties Adam’s issues with his parents, his sexuality, his lifestyle, his profession, his very being all together in a way which feels holistic and real. Haigh also dares to give us those pesky narrative building blocks with which Kaurismäki has dispensed: conflict, three-dimensional characters with unique traits and speaking patterns, arresting visuals, any reason whatsoever to give a shit about what’s happening on screen, etc.

All of Us Strangers has its faults, to be sure - in its final moments, it runs smack dab into the kind of treacle and literalism it has thus far artfully managed to avoid. But by that point you’re already so sucked in, it barely matters. All of Us Strangers will make you weep, which, if you ask me, is far preferable to what Fallen Leaves makes you feel, which is nothing.