The Match Girl

In the 1980s, Finnish filmmakers often spoke of a shortage of good stories as a problem for Finnish cinema. Aki Kaurismäki then thought that the basis for a film might be something as simple as an ordinary matchstick: where are they made? In some factory. Who makes them? Perhaps some girl. Where does she go after work? Maybe home. What awaits her? Maybe a troubled father. From this elementary chain of thought emerges, in the end, a drama of almost classical proportions. The film contains, even for Kaurismäki's work, remarkably few lines of dialogue - the first is spoken only after nine minutes: "One small beer."

From Hans Christian Andersen's fairy tale about a poor match girl who finds freedom from the world's suffering on the last day of the year, Kaurismäki took primarily the figure of a girl bound to matches. The main character, Iris, works, as the title suggests, in a match factory. Otherwise, she fits squarely into the Kaurismäki type: though an adult, she still lives with her parents, escaping life's monotony through romance novels and occasional visits to a dance hall.

One day she meets the man of her dreams - only to discover he bears no resemblance to the hero of her escape literature. Iris cannot forgive the disappointment. Unlike Andersen's girl, whose life ends in near-total stillness, the film's Iris decides to act. Revenge born of shattered illusions seems both pathetic and inappropriate, yet it is precisely the protagonist's determination - pulling her from her deadening stillness - that gives the film its genuinely dramatic power.