The Match Factory Girl

This is a downbeat story of a young woman, Iris, who works on an assembly line in a match stick factory in Finland. Iris' life would give testament to the truth of Thoreau's quote, "The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation." She comes home from her tedious job to a dismal apartment that she shares with her mother and stepfather--both major losers. They take what little money Iris earns and berate her if she spends on herself.

While Iris is not unattractive, she presents such a sullen and drab appearance that she is ignored at community dances, until she buys a new red dress when she finally attracts the attention of a man. But don't plan on a happy ending to that one. Years of suppressed resentment can provoke dramatic acts of revenge.

At a little over an hour this movie could have played as an episode on "Alfred Hitchcock Presents." Except it has better production values and acting that most shows on that program. I thought the humorous twist in the final scene was particularly in the style of Hitchcock.

I enjoyed the establishing shots in the match factory. I have never given much thought about the process of creating match sticks and found the presentation of that interesting. So much complexity and machinery involved in producing such a simple product.

Yesterday I watched this film straight after Kaurismaki's film of the same year 'I Hired a Contract Killer', and this struck me as a far superior film, possibly because I'd prefer to see drab Finnish locations than (the usual) drab British locations and maybe also because of the annoying poor acting from Jean-Pierre Leaud's female co-star (my Finnish friend asked me why the women sounded like a 'learn the English language' tape). Overall the film seemed to be a generally better piece of cinema than 'Contract Killer'.'The Match Factory Girl' is a continuation of Kaurismaki's trade-mark minimal style (and also content)in which a young (match-factory working) girl leads a depressingly sad life in which she is used and abused by everyone around. Kaurismaki's films (to me at least) can be described as deadpan Bergman in silence, and yesterday i heard that Aki grew up with autism, this is partly the reason of the lack of communication between characters and also the low amount of dialogue. The film is not as depressing as sounds though, and is lifted by Kaurismaki's use of deadpan humour. For any Kaurismaki (add to this Jarmusch and Kitano)fan, this film will not disappoint, although it is pretty difficult to track down.

Short, simple, almost completely free of dialogue, "The Match Factory Girl" is perhaps cinema at its purest form. How brave to create a film where the viewer is forced to watch the poor heroine spiral down further and further into wretchedness, all the way to the bottom, with a wry smile and deadpan detachment all the way. But just because the movie's tone is cold and standoffish doesn't mean it's unaffecting. I saw this movie over 5 years ago and the memory of it still ties my heart in a knot.

Iris is a young Finnish girl whose life has no horizon. She works in a match factory and still lives at her parents'. She escapes by reading soppy love stories or by attending a dance. One night, she thinks she has found Prince Charming. But the latter reveals himself a scornful human being who has no consideration for her. Then, she is chased away by her parents and relies on her brother's generosity to put her up. But Iris didn't say her last word and she decides to prepare a plan to have a revenge on the ones who couldn't love her.

In the nineteenth Century, Andersen, a Danish writer wrote a tale entitled "the little match girl". Here, the film-maker Aki Kaurismäki kept certain elements of this tale to create in his own way, a sort of updated version. And it's a much more austere one so much that it virtually evokes Robert Bresson's cinema. This is how I perceive "the Match Factory Girl" (1990): a cross between a modernized version of Andersen's tale and Bresson's cinema for the straight-forward style and the intense austerity in which the story bathes.

Aki Kaurismäki seems to have understood that to give his movie a big dramatic intensity, ostentation and exaggeration were to be excluded. The amount? A grievous movie which hurts where everything in the cinema writing is reduced to simplicity, nearly stillness and despair. This, to better express the dreary world in which Iris is prisoner and the wrong hopes she comes up against. Barely camera movements (the movie nearly looks like a succession of paintings), sinister scenery, blue-green lighting, dumb or merciless characters blend themselves to create a universe impenetrable to happiness. To plunge more in this desolate world, Kaurismäki nearly shot a silent movie, only scattered by laconic and reduced in the extreme dialogs. But to tell the truth, dialogs are not the most important thing. Looks matter more and reveal best the characters' thoughts and feelings.

The director's sympathy towards Iris and making her put up at her brother's are the only pities he shows and his movie would be of a total blackness if there wasn't humor. A humor which acts in an ironic way: "I came to tell you goodbye...".

Overrall, this grave movie about the lack of love strikes right at the heart and its vision is rather difficult. If you are down in the dumps, save it for a better day. It's a short movie (hardly an hour) but Iris' pale and retiring countenance stays rooted for a long time in the spectator's brain. And Kati Outinen, impressive of fragility and sensitiveness is perfect in this role.

Kaurismaki is nothing if not an efficient director. The stylistic elements of 'The Match Factory Girl' are distilled, like the vodka that is drunk throughout, to produce an intense and disturbing effect. Much of the action goes on outside the characteristically static camera frame, and Kati Outinen's deadpan face conveys a correspondingly broad range of expressions (she is excellent at signalling imminent vomiting without appearing to twitch a muscle). It's a film that moves on and out with the minimum of movement and dialogue, and its downwards pull is mesmerising. It's also bitterly funny. Late in the film the main character, Iris, approaches the shop counter and asks for a bottle of rat poison, to which the reply is: 'Small or large?'

I was fairly low when I saw this film. I came out feeling marvellous. Another triumph for the relief to be found in misery, a paradox which Kaurismaki cheerfully exploits in his dark, tragic & hilarious films.