Lights in the Dusk.

"A mood of cosmic desolation seeps like late autumn sunlight filtered through clouds in Lights in the Dusk, the Finnish filmmaker Aki Kaurismäki's haunting meditation on the downward spiral of a solitary loser in contemporary Helsinki," writes Stephen Holden in the New York Times.

"All of Kaurismäki's work seems to come from the same template; it's deadpan and glum to the core with a late-breaking streak of hard-earned optimism," writes Vadim Rizov for the Reeler. "But Kaurismäki's sardonic director's statement describes him as a "sentimental old man," and Lights in the Dusk - like its predecessor, The Man Without a Past - tends to bears this diagnosis out, though not in a good way."

Updated through 6/15.

"Much of the comedy in Kaurismäki's latest work of Nordic austerity - and yes, if you're perverse enough some of it is actually funny - derives from the fact that the story belongs to the tradition of Chekhov and Dostoevski and the deadpan acting to that of Robert Bresson, but the damn thing looks like an episode of I Dream of Jeannie," writes Salon's Andrew O'Hehir.

"Funniest thing is, Kaurismäki is not a cynic," writes Armond White in the New York Press. "Fascinated with human drudgery, he has an interest in the common nature of desperate people that is almost affectionate.... The downbeat tone of Lights in the Dusk just escapes offense and self-parody due to Kaurismäki's careful, subtle craftsmanship."

More from Nicolas Rapold for the L Magazine and Jürgen Fauth.

IndieWIRE interviews Kaurismäki.

Earlier: "Cannes. Laitakaupungin Valot."

Update, 6/15: Jeff Reichert at indieWIRE: "Lights in the Dusk may not add anything particularly novel to the Kaurismäki formula, but for this viewer, easy familiarity bred content."

Lights, "though leavened with Kaurismäki's usual deadpan humor, takes a dispiriting turn into miserabilism - Koistinen [Janne Hyytiäinen] is used and abused so relentlessly that he might as well be in a Fassbinder flick," writes Mike D'Angelo for Nerve.

Most of the time, Kaurismäki's sensibility is unabashedly retro, tuned to what was hip 25 or 30 years ago," writes Steve Erickson at Gay City News. "Unfortunately, the film suggests that he's exhausted his influences and sorely needs a new source of inspiration. Handsome-looking and well made, it only lacks a pulse."

Posted by dwhudson at June 14, 2007 7:16 AM