Though it takes some alternative, idealist version of the titular port city in France as its setting, the shadows of realities, both past and present, are easily visible in Aki Kaurismaki's wonderful new feature, Le Havre. The romantic pleasantries, communal atmosphere and we-are-the-world storyline laid out in the script by Kaurismaki are brilliantly deployed by the Finnish master, and yet there is a palpable detachment from the easy sentimental rewards that these popular hallmarks promise. Indeed, this is one of those rare occasions where the tired describer "a fairytale for adults" seems oddly apropos to the tone and mood of the film.
Our focus is on Marcel Marx (Andre Wilms), a boldly named bohemian who makes a few scraps as a shoeshine and still seems the embodiment of the socialist spirit. The few dollars and cents he collects daily are just enough for his wife, Arletty (Kati Outinen, Kaurismaki's regular female lead), to live comfortably, eat most meals, keep a dog, feed a cigarette habit and still have some room for a few small glasses of white wine at the local bar. Things are not fancy but they are surprisingly good, and when he finds himself taking in and teaching a Senegalese refugee, Idrissa (Blondin Miguel), he takes it on with the full force of social restitution. Traveling to speak to the boy's grandfather and receive instruction on where the rest of Idrissa's family Is, Marcel is kept in the dark about Arletty's grim diagnosis following a trip to the hospital.
Local merchants, neighbors and friends that Marcel was deeply in debt to forgive everything and even donate groceries and space for Idrissa, but there is trouble afoot in the guise of Monet (a superb Jean-Pierre Darroussin), an otherworldly inspector bent on tracking down Idrissa, and a fascistic neighborhood snitch, played by Godard and Rivette favorite Jean-Pierre Leaud. Both may suggest menace but neither are capable of much more than minor threats, and Monet serves a particularly interesting purpose in Kaurismaki's tale. It is this black-raincoat-clad would-be villain that invokes the camaraderie of the French resistance, and there are potent indicators that Le Havre is an extension of a wouldn't-it-be-nice daydream of a world where that spirit replaced the dreadful, showy age of Sarkozy.But as much as the specters of past idealists drift about in Kaurismaki's landscapes, so do the ghosts of Chaplin and Bresson haunt the narrative. There is a perfectly sweet simplicity to the trajectory of the love story between Arletty and Marcel that suggests nothing less than ageless yet aged versions of Chaplin and Virginia Cherrill in City Lights. There are also traces of Godard and Truffaut in Kaurismaki's style, and Leaud's appearance further compliments the concept that films of Le Havre's caliber would be more commonplace had the ideals of the French New Wave been carried on into the age of Ozon, Leconte and Breillat. The editing by Timo Linnasalo, who paired with Kaurismaki on one of his masterpieces, The Man Without a Past, even suggests the cutting of American noirs that students of the New Wave praised so regularly.
Le Havre offers plenty of things to talk about but perhaps the most remarkable part about it is its confidence of style and its sober-eyed sense of uplift. Kaurismaki's talents at this point are such that even his lesser works, such as Lights in the Dusk, deal in very distinct cinematic pleasures that are hard to resist; his use of color alone deserves a full semester at any decent film school. The fantasia he envisions here is eclectic and consistently engaging unlike many of his works, swinging from a benefit rock concert featuring legendary French rocker Little Bob to Monet's past entanglements with the local barmaid who regularly serves Marcel. There's also a great stowaway plot that serves as the film's climax but more importantly leads to the film's lovely close. As Marcel and Arletty are treated to a miracle worthy of Dreyer's Ordet, Kaurismaki indulges in what you might call a Hollywood ending, but his dreamy tone and the cast's uniformly impressive, preposterously underplayed style make the happy ending feel earned. It's the sort of blissful dream state you dread waking up from.
