The Match Factory Girl

A factory worker secretly dreams of love, as in books, and one day meets a bearded man in a bar. She thinks it's true love, he thinks she's a prostitute. The toughest and slowest is one of Kaurismäki's best films.

Aki Kaurismäki is like the Finnish Jim Jarmusch (by the way, they are friends). A singer of the city outskirts, where waitresses and saleswomen, garbage collectors and miners, and tram and trailer drivers live, cursing their work when they have it and their lives when they lose it. Here's a very revealing excerpt from an interview with Kaurismäki:

- Your film is magnificent. And most importantly, it's very funny...

- No, it's a tragedy.

- Why is it a tragedy?

- Because I'm a nobody.

- Why are you a nobody?

- Because I'm sad.

- Why are you sad?

- I don't know. I've been like this since birth.

- Is that the only reason?

- No, I'm also Finnish.

- What does this sadness consist of?

- People drink more and more, fight more and more, and commit suicide more and more often.

- It's an apocalypse!

- No, it's Finland.