Review of Le Havre (2011) by Eric R — 30 Apr 2012

From the opening scene, Aki Kaurismaki's Le Havre revel in it's optimism and deadpan humor, which can only be described as a fairy-tale like. Marcel, a shoe-shiner, witness one of his customers being gunned down in front of him, off screen, yet the eternal optimist merely says to his colleague, "At least he paid first".

Le Havre is the story of a optimistic man who is dealing with hardship. His wife has been diagosed with a disease, that almost means certain death. As fate would have it, Marcel meets through chance a young African refugree, Idrissa, and much of the film involves Marcel's unwavering desire to help Idrissa excape the authorities and get to London where he can be reunited with his mother.

Marcel is really a greatly composed character, who is supported with great character details-his optimism towards his profession where he exudes, "there are few professions where one has so much much human contatct".

I've always been a fan of Aki Kaurismaki's minimalistic visual style, where the camera and framing is almost always stagnant. He uses motion in such a sparing way, that when it is used it's greatly affective at portraying emotion-the scene where Marcel's wife realizes she is very ill, for example, where the camera slowly punches is on her expressive sorrow.

The same can be said for his use of lighting, while it's naturalistic, it's also very expressive during certain scenes-best example being the scene where little bob and his wife are reunited.