Shadows in Paradise

The brightest film from Aki Kaurismäki's "Proletariat Trilogy" with an unexpectedly optimistic and touching ending.

Kaurismäki often spoke about how his "Proletariat Trilogy" should have been called the "Trilogy of Losers." Indeed, everything that happens in the already difficult lives of his characters invariably turns for the worse. By chance, a garbage truck driver and a supermarket cashier in "Shadows in Paradise," a miner and a meat factory worker in "Ariel," and the lonely heroine of "The Match Factory Girl" find themselves as involuntary outsiders even among the marginalized layers of the working class. Constantly balancing on the brink between social drama and parody, Kaurismäki offers us three films about how to hit rock bottom when you are already there and what to do next. Especially when surrounded by the meticulously crafted world of frozen Finnish landscapes and faces, sewn into the strict and beautiful space of a visual and eventful deficit.