The Man Without A Past
- Film Worth:$11.50
- FILMINK rates movies out of $20 - the score indicates the amount we believe a ticket to the movie to be worth
Aki Kaurismaki (Drifting Clouds, Leningrad Cowboys Go America) is Finland's proudest film export, and he...
Aki Kaurismaki (Drifting Clouds, Leningrad Cowboys Go America) is Finland's proudest film export, and he does make strange and often haunting films. Someone once famously defined the Finns as being "silent in two languages", and this off-beat love story has its share of Harold Pinter-style pauses and understatement.
The hero is an amnesiac called "M". He is affectingly played by the lugubriously handsome Markku Peltola in his first lead role. After a mugging robs him of his past he finds solace, and, surprisingly, romance from a Salvation Army lady called Irma (Kati Outinen), who seduces him over the soup kitchen cauldron.
The way the romance develops, and the wordlessly sly, lover's communication between them, is nicely done and it draw us in. It would be easy to dismiss this in some ways as "typical SBS fare", but the film deserves to be approached on its own terms. It doesn't try too hard but there's a good story there. It also has some delightfully exotic music. The Salvo Finnish rock band seems almost too crazy for words, but exactly like the film, it all works because they believe in it.
