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Havre, Le
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| Year: |
2011
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Director: |
Aki Kaurismäki
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| Stars: |
André Wilms, Kati Outinen, Jean-Pierre Darroussin, Blondin Miguel, Elina Salo, Evelyne Didi, Quoc Dung Nguyen, Laïka, François Monnié, Little Bob, Pierre Étaix, Jean-Pierre Léaud, Vincent Lebodo, Umban U'kset, Patrick Bonnel, Myriam 'Mimie' Piazza
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| Genre: |
Comedy, Drama |
| Rating: |
  7 (from 1 vote) |
| Review: |
Marcel Marx (André Wilms) works a shoeshine business which he operates himself, taking his equipment and hanging around railway stations and other places of public gathering to ply his trade, no matter if he has a permit or not. Today he witnesses one customer get gunned down right after he's paid him, so he rushes away so he is not involved in the investigation for the last thing he wants to do is have a contact with the police. On his way home, the people in his neighbourhood are wise to his tricks and his habit of not paying his bills, but two things are about to give him a wake up call...
The closest thing you'd get to an Aki Kaurismäki feelgood movie, Le Havre was one of the cult Finnish filmmaker's exercises in a foreign language, in this case French as it was set wholly in France, though his mascot Kati Outinen co-starred as usual, here playing Arletty, the wife of Marcel (that name possibly a classic French cinema reference to Les Enfants du Paradis, just as the location could be a nod to Le Quai des Brumes). Arletty is not a well woman, and dreads telling her husband that she will soon be exiting his life when he depends on her so much, so when she has to go into hospital she tells him she's on the mend.
Which sounds like a more typical item of misery from this director, yet just as some filmmakers grow more cynical and gloomy in their outlook as they age, here Kaurismäki appeared to be heading in the opposite direction. Not that this came across as the work of an entirely different talent as his deadpan sense of humour was still well to the fore, and at times there were very big laughs here in amongst the more serious plot points, but the fact that he credited the pet dog Laïka (as herself, apparently) in the opening titles was a strong indication of the film being far more softhearted than his filmography had been in the past. Throw in another performer essentially in the role of themself, and you had a story going in pleasing directions.
He being Little Bob, a veteran French rock 'n' roller here making a rare big screen showing, and getting to perform a song and a bit as Marcel persuades him to hold a charity concert (though true to form, without his wife around Marcel gets the day of the event wrong and is only reminded at the last minute). But the concert is not for Arletty, it is for the other thing in Marcel's life which is causing him great heartache: the young refugee Idrissa (Blondin Miguel) who escapes a container full of his fellow illegal immigrants and goes on the run, ending up hiding with Marcel who takes him under his wing. Whether this was to demonstrate that he could actually manage to do something himself was not made clear.
Especially when he continued to make little slips, but overall our roguish hero proved himself quite admirable as he endeavoured to get Idrissa across the Channel to London where the boy's mother is working in a laundry and can give him the stability and the roof over his head he really needs. To do so he has to bribe a trawlerman with the cash he hopes to raise from the concert, but there are complications when a dogged policeman, Monet (Jean-Pierre Darroussin), is on the trail of the kid. Yet even then, nobody in this is completely without merit as pertaining to the demands of the story, with the odd unfriendly character appearing to be so because we have not seen their more decent side, as we do with those we spend more time with. Kaurismäki was clearly aiming to make his audience go "awww" with the manner this played out, and the change of style managed to be recognisably his and refreshing into the bargain - if only slightly jarring.
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| Reviewer: |
Graeme Clark
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