“Girl from a match factory” ( Finnish. Tulitikkutehtaan tyttö ) - 1990 feature film by Finnish director Aki Kaurismäki . Its name refers to the story of Hans Christian Andersen's “ Girl with Matches ” [1] .
| Match factory girl | |
|---|---|
| Tulitikkutehtaan tyttö | |
 | |
| Genre | drama |
| Producer | Aki Kaurismäki |
| Producer | Katinka Farago Aki Kaurismäki Klas Olofsson |
| Author script | Aki Kaurismäki |
| In the main cast | Katie Outinen Elina Salo Esko Nikkari Vesa Viericco |
| Operator | Timo Salminen |
| Film company | Esselte Video, Finnkino, Svenska Filminstitutet (SFI), Villealfa Filmproduction Oy |
| Duration | 68 minutes |
| A country |  Finland  Sweden |
| Tongue | Finnish |
| Year | 1990 |
| IMDb | ID 0098532 |
Content
Story
The main character Iris works in a match factory. Her life is monotonous and boring: her work is uninteresting, her mother and stepfather are waiting for her at home, who are occasionally attracted only by television news. From entertainment, Iris only dances in a local bar, where no one pays attention to her.
Once she meets a wealthy man in a bar and spends the night with him. She hopes that the man will help her break out of the stuffy world of factory life, but he does not even think about a long relationship with her. Iris soon finds out that she is pregnant.
Rejected by a man and parents, Iris falls under a car and loses a child. Having moved to her brother, she acquires rat poison to send to the next world not only the immediate culprits of her misfortune, but also everyone who gets in her way ...
Analysis
“A Girl from a Match Factory” completes the “proletarian trilogy” by Aki Kaurismäki, which began with the films “ Shadows in Paradise ” (1986) and “ Ariel ” (1988). As the director recalls, in a fit of hatred, he came up with the idea of making a film so slow that in comparison with it, Robert Bresson would have seemed the creator of the militants [2] . Slowed down narrative, extreme minimalism of dialogues help to feel the uniformity of working days [3] .
As in the movie “ Hamlet Goes to Business, ” the film’s figurative system - a conveyor for the production of matches in the first frames - indicates that the life of the characters is a natural continuation of the dominant production system, that it is in it that the root of their troubles should be sought [2] . Jonathan Rosenbaum sees the influence of Fassbinder in the fact that at Kaurismäki society turns people into things, into objects, that they are all, to one degree or another, victims of the capitalist economic system.
“A girl from a match factory” is called Kaurismäki's most hopeless film [4] . Like the Coen brothers in the Hollywood mainstream , Kaurismäki fixes the world around him dispassionately, realistically, without compassion, making a disappointing diagnosis: there is no way out [3] . The cruelty reigning in the world provokes a response from the heroine.
It is symbolic that the television news shown in the film is dedicated to the events of 1989 on Tan'anmen Square (including a simple Chinese man with a string bag, who for half an hour alone restrained a column of tanks, a real person whose identity was never identified and who entered a story under the code name Unknown rebel ), the death of Ayatollah Khomeini , as well as the largest railway accident in Soviet history in Bashkiria in June 1989 .
Awards and nominations
- Katie Outinen - Iris
- Elina Salo - mother
- Esko Nikkari - stepfather
- Vesa Viericco - Aarne
- Reio Taipale - singer
- Seppälä's Force - Brother Iris
- Outi Määnpää - co - worker Iris
- Maria Pakkalen - Doctor
- Richard Ratinger - Man at the Bar
Rewards
- Berlin Film Festival (1990):
- Interfilm Award - Aki Kaurismäki
- OCIC Award (Honorable Mention) - Aki Kaurismäki
Kati Outinen for her role in this film became the laureate of the Finnish national film award “ Jussi ” in the nomination “ For Best Actress ” (1991).
Nominations
- European Film Academy Award ( Felix Awards ): Best Film (1990)
Notes
- ↑ Andrei Plakhov : “This is the new incarnation of the Andersen“ little match girl ”- an incarnation full of quiet horror before life and at the same time giving catharsis , from which, according to experts, the bones of Aristotle would sweetly crack.”
- ↑ 1 2 3 JonathanRosenbaum.com “Blog Archive” Wallflower's Revenge Archived October 3, 2009 on Wayback Machine
- ↑ 1 2 Tulitikkutehtaan Tytto> Review // AllMovie. (English) (Retrieved December 8, 2014)
- ↑ The film "The Girl from the Match Factory" - Review (2 of 2) - Poster
Links
- " Match Girl " on the Internet Movie Database
- Girl from a match factory (English) on the site allmovie