Film

Fallen Leaves

Name: Fallen Leaves
Genre: Romance, Drama, Comedy
Released: 2023
Cast: Alma Pöysti, Jussi Vatanen, Janne Hyytiäinen, Nuppu Koivu, Mia Snellman

Aki Kaurismäki's deadpan miracle: two lonely, underpaid Helsinkiites keep almost finding each other, thwarted by lost phone numbers, bad luck, and one man's drinking. Shot in his trademark flat, saturated colour with barely any dialogue and even less sentimentality, it's a comedy about loneliness that somehow ends up one of the tenderest love stories in recent memory. Brief, exact, and quietly devastating.

TMDb rating

7.1

If you liked this

The Man Without a Past2002

Kaurismäki's earlier stab at the same deadpan tenderness, following an amnesiac who rebuilds a life among Helsinki's forgotten and finds unlikely love along the way. Same dry humour, same soft heart.

But If you found Fallen Leaves' pacing glacial, this one's even more meandering and shaggy.

Le Havre2011

Kaurismäki again, this time following a shoe-shiner who shelters a migrant boy. Same stone-faced compassion for society's overlooked, same absurdist comic timing undercutting real stakes.

But More overtly political than Fallen Leaves, which might feel like a shift if you wanted pure romance.

Paterson2016

Jim Jarmusch's ode to a bus driver's quiet, poetic routine has the same unhurried love of small dignities and small towns. A film that finds beauty in repetition rather than plot.

But Almost nothing happens by design — if you wanted more forward motion than Fallen Leaves gave you, this offers less.

The wildcard

Something you would not have found on your own.

City Lights1931

Same DNA: a poor, dignified outsider chasing love through comic misfortune, ending on a wordless gesture that says everything Fallen Leaves is built from.

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But Silent and dated in its comic rhythms — a real ask if you've never sat with pre-sound cinema.

Amélie2001

A lonely woman engineers small miracles for strangers while chasing a shy man of her own — whimsical, visually saturated, and just as invested in fate's cruel timing.

But Far more maximalist and twinkly than Kaurismäki's austerity; the whimsy is turned all the way up.

Brief Encounter1945

The classic template for love thwarted by circumstance and repression, told with the same restraint and devastating understatement that makes the smallest gestures land hardest.

But Very much a product of its era — clipped, formal English dialogue that some will find stiff.

Lost in Translation2003

Two adrift people find each other in a city that doesn't quite belong to them, communicating mostly through silence and glances rather than declarations.

But Slower and more meditative on alienation itself, with less structural comedy than Fallen Leaves offers.

Once2007

A busker and a flower-seller circle each other over a handful of days in Dublin, all shyness and near-misses, told with the same unglamorous, working-class honesty.

But It's a musical at heart — if you don't want songs carrying the emotional weight, this won't land the same.

Sideways2004

A wry, melancholy comedy about a man whose drinking keeps sabotaging his chance at connection — funnier and more American, but the same undertow of self-defeat.

But Broader and chattier than Kaurismäki's minimalism; the humour is verbal rather than visual.

Frances Ha2013

A loose, funny portrait of drifting adulthood and near-misses with happiness, shot in crisp black and white with the same fondness for its flailing, ordinary heroine.

But Much more talkative and youthfully chaotic than the still, spare rhythms of Fallen Leaves.

Only Yesterday1991

Trade live-action deadpan for hand-drawn stillness and you get the same tender attention to the unglamorous rhythms of working life and love arriving, if it arrives, on its own quiet schedule.

A Studio Ghibli film almost nobody mentions — a woman on a train to the countryside drifts between memory and the quiet ache of an ordinary, unfulfilled life, rendered in gorgeously understated animation.

But No fantasy elements, very little plot momentum — this is Ghibli at its most adult and internal, which surprises people expecting spirits and magic.

Leaving Las Vegas1995

Same engine — a drinker and a person who loves them anyway, love arriving too late or not quite enough — played for tragedy instead of Kaurismäki's wry, forgiving comedy.

Nicolas Cage and Elisabeth Shue as two people finding real tenderness for each other while addiction closes in around them — the darker, tragic mirror of Fallen Leaves' more forgiving take on the same problem.

But This is bleak, unsentimental, and doesn't offer the small mercies Kaurismäki allows his characters — go in braced.