Le Havre – review
Aki Kaurismäki is as offbeat as always, but this immigration-themed film gives him a new heartfelt urgency
The Finnish director Aki Kaurismäki has come to France for his latest film, making explicit his indebtedness to figures like Tati and Vigo. It is seductively funny, offbeat and warm-hearted, like the rest of his films, but with a new heartfelt urgency on the subject of northern Europe's attitude to desperate refugees from the developing world. The movie is set in the port city of Le Havre, maybe summoning a distant ghost of L'Atalante, and it has a solid, old-fashioned look; but for the contemporary theme, it could have been made at any time in the last 50 years. André Wilms is Marcel, a phlegmatic shoe-shine guy who plies his trade around the streets as best he can. He discovers a young boy called Idrissa (Blondin Miguel), an illegal immigrant on the run, and hides him from the authorities, including the tough Inspector Monet, superbly played by Jean-Pierre Darroussin. It's a drama that plays out in parallel with private heartbreak: Marcel's gentle wife Arletty, played by Kati Outinen, is in hospital. The drollery and deadpan in Kaurismäki's style in no way undermine the emotional force of this tale; they give it a sweetness and an ingenuous, Chaplinesque simplicity. It's a satisfying and distinctively lovable film.