According to André Wilms—the star of Le Havre—during his hilarious stream of consciousness Q&A at a screening for the Toronto International Film Festival, director Aki Kaurismäki decided it was time to make a comedy/fairy tale. The Finn had created so many “desperate” films that a change was needed. And what better setting than France to bring it to life, a country who’s film history is held dear and apparently seen as dead by the director, (sentiments Wilms agreed with only half-jokingly). You’ll notice subtle nods to an older style with a lingering camera, exaggerated acting, and theatrical vibe, but that’s not to say the film itself is old fashioned. No, the color is vibrant, the characters humorous—if not overtly so—and the hard-boiled noir is subverted just enough to keep the whole light and airy.
It is Wilms’ Marcel Marx who we meet in the beginning.
It is Wilms’ Marcel Marx who we meet in the beginning.
- 9/10/2011
- by jpraup@gmail.com (thefilmstage.com)
- The Film Stage
Time to continue our tour de France. Oh, sorry, I meant – tour de Cannes! Next movie we’re going to talk about is a movie titled Le Havre directed by Aki Kaurismaki that is scheduled to premiere In Competition at this year’s Cannes Film Festival.
We’re talking about another “dramatic comedy” but who would expect less from Kaurismaki?
At this moment we know that this project tells the story of a shoeshiner who tries to save an immigrant child in the French port city Le Havre.
Director Kaurismaki had the idea of a film about an African child arriving in Europe three years before the production started. He considered setting the story in Marseille and port cities in Spain and Portugal, but found Le Havre to be the ideal location, saying:
“It is a great place to work and Le Havre is a perfect name for the movie.
We’re talking about another “dramatic comedy” but who would expect less from Kaurismaki?
At this moment we know that this project tells the story of a shoeshiner who tries to save an immigrant child in the French port city Le Havre.
Director Kaurismaki had the idea of a film about an African child arriving in Europe three years before the production started. He considered setting the story in Marseille and port cities in Spain and Portugal, but found Le Havre to be the ideal location, saying:
“It is a great place to work and Le Havre is a perfect name for the movie.
- 4/22/2011
- by Fiona
- Filmofilia
Updated through 4/20.
Gilles Jacob and Thierry Frémaux announced that, out of 1715 submissions, 49 features from 33 countries have been selected in total for this year's Cannes Film Festival — four of them made by women, a record. 19 titles are lined up for the Competition so far, leaving room for surprise announcements from here on to the Opening Ceremony on May 11.
Competition
Pedro Almodóvar's The Skin I Inhabit. As noted yesterday, here's what Variety's Justin Chang had heard as of this past weekend: "In late March, it seemed that Almodóvar, a Cannes veteran who won prizes for All About My Mother and Volver, might skip the event altogether this year. Since 2004's Bad Education, the helmer has presented every one of his films in competition at the May fest, usually following a spring local release. The Sept 2 Spanish release date for The Skin That I Inhabit (which Sony Classics will release Stateside in...
Gilles Jacob and Thierry Frémaux announced that, out of 1715 submissions, 49 features from 33 countries have been selected in total for this year's Cannes Film Festival — four of them made by women, a record. 19 titles are lined up for the Competition so far, leaving room for surprise announcements from here on to the Opening Ceremony on May 11.
Competition
Pedro Almodóvar's The Skin I Inhabit. As noted yesterday, here's what Variety's Justin Chang had heard as of this past weekend: "In late March, it seemed that Almodóvar, a Cannes veteran who won prizes for All About My Mother and Volver, might skip the event altogether this year. Since 2004's Bad Education, the helmer has presented every one of his films in competition at the May fest, usually following a spring local release. The Sept 2 Spanish release date for The Skin That I Inhabit (which Sony Classics will release Stateside in...
- 4/21/2011
- MUBI
#32. Le Havre Director/Screenwriter: Aki Kaurismäki Producers: Haije TulokasDistributor: Rights Available. The Gist: This is about a boot polisher who tries to save a refugee.....(more) Cast: André Wilms, Kati Outinen, Elina Salo and Ilkka Koivula List Worthy Reasons...: With only a pair of films made in the past decade with The Man Without a Past (2002) and Lights in the Dusk (2006), we are itching for Kaurismaki's brand of dramatic comedy. Release Date/Status?: The film might receive a headstart in the filmmaker's native Finland, but Aki Kaurismäki is among Cannes' favorites so I'm expecting its international preem to take place at the fest especially since it was filmed in France and is in the French language. Fest circuit showings to follow in the autumn. ...
- 1/14/2011
- IONCINEMA.com
On the world cinema front, we have a new film from Aki Kaurismäki (filming in the North of France), we have Lou Ye joining forces with Tahar Rahim, and another auteur in Phillippe Garrel who will be directing Monica Bellucci. - At the beginning of every month, Ioncinema.com's "Tracking Shot" features a half dozen or so projects that are moments away from lensing and that we feel are worth signaling out. This March, we've got a good grouping - apart from Fox Searchlight's wild card film from Danny Boyle, most of these films will be 2011 releases. On the world cinema front, we have a new film from Aki Kaurismäki (filming in the North of France), we have Lou Ye joining forces with Tahar Rahim, and another auteur in Phillippe Garrel who will be directing Monica Bellucci. In the indie production world, Killer Films will be commencing production...
- 3/1/2010
- IONCINEMA.com
Visually sublime and emotionally buoyant, Aki Kaurismaki's black-and-white silent effort "Juha" is a jewel, a beautifully crafted work suffused with the director's deadpan wit, elegantly terse narrative style and bleakly ironic pessimism found in his greatest works ("Ariel", "The Match Factory Girl"). In mood and effect, it summons up a lost art form -- telling its story in images and conveying its depth of feeling in expression and body inflection.
Shown twice at the Berlin Film Festival with a live musical accompaniment by the Anssi Tikanmaki Filmorchestra, "Juha" seems a film intended for limited, highly specialized audiences. Under any circumstances, it remains a free, intensely accessible work. Adapting a 1911 novel by Finnish author Juhani Aho, Kaurismaki creates a startling and imaginative tale of love lost and regained.
At its core, "Juha" is a love triangle of shifting emotional currents and sharp reversals. Deceptively simple couple Juha (Sakari Kuosmanen) and Marja (Kati Outinen) watch sinister "outsider" Shemeikka (Andre Wilms) undermine their bond in convincing Marja that the hulking, pleasant Juha is an unworthy mate because of a slight physical impediment. At last giving in to his seedy charm and persistent manner, Marja follows Shemeikka to Helsinki. The balance of the narrative is Juha's uncompromising quest to woo Marja back.
Working with his great cinematographer Timo Salminen, Kaurismaki draws on a deeply elemental physical style, a beautifully rhyming symphony of water, landscape and air that is the ideal visual complement to Anssi Tikanmaki's deeply ambient music. A former film critic with an encyclopedic knowledge of film history, Kaurismaki references the gracefully gliding camera work of F.W. Murnau ("The Last Laugh") and the vivid emotional force of D.W. Griffith ("Broken Blossoms").
There is also a very witty tribute to his old friend, the great American director Samuel Fuller, who appeared in his adaptation of "La vie de boheme".
The images in "Juha" sing and soar, such as the quiet, tender moment when Marja drapes Juha's arm over her in bed. There is no more wistful or quietly devastating moment than the sight of the large, ill-fitted Juha stranded on the side of the road. The one time direct sound is heard, of Shemeikka's sister (Elina Salo) performing a French song in a cafe, the moment has a stunning emotional impact, a feeling of time elegantly, dramatically being reborn.
JUHA
A Sputnik Oy production
An Aki Kaurismaki film
Director-producer-writer-editor: Aki Kaurismaki
Based on the novel by: Juhani Aho
Music: Anssi Tikanmaki
Director of photography: Timo Salminen
Production manager: Ilkka Mertsola
Sound: Jouko Lumme
Set design: Markku Patila, Jukka Salmi
Black and white/stereo
Cast:
Juha: Sakari Kuosmanen
Marja: Kati Outinen
Shemeikka: Andre Wilms
Driver: Marku Peltola
Shemeikka's sister: Elina Salo
Running time --78 minutes
No MPAA rating...
Shown twice at the Berlin Film Festival with a live musical accompaniment by the Anssi Tikanmaki Filmorchestra, "Juha" seems a film intended for limited, highly specialized audiences. Under any circumstances, it remains a free, intensely accessible work. Adapting a 1911 novel by Finnish author Juhani Aho, Kaurismaki creates a startling and imaginative tale of love lost and regained.
At its core, "Juha" is a love triangle of shifting emotional currents and sharp reversals. Deceptively simple couple Juha (Sakari Kuosmanen) and Marja (Kati Outinen) watch sinister "outsider" Shemeikka (Andre Wilms) undermine their bond in convincing Marja that the hulking, pleasant Juha is an unworthy mate because of a slight physical impediment. At last giving in to his seedy charm and persistent manner, Marja follows Shemeikka to Helsinki. The balance of the narrative is Juha's uncompromising quest to woo Marja back.
Working with his great cinematographer Timo Salminen, Kaurismaki draws on a deeply elemental physical style, a beautifully rhyming symphony of water, landscape and air that is the ideal visual complement to Anssi Tikanmaki's deeply ambient music. A former film critic with an encyclopedic knowledge of film history, Kaurismaki references the gracefully gliding camera work of F.W. Murnau ("The Last Laugh") and the vivid emotional force of D.W. Griffith ("Broken Blossoms").
There is also a very witty tribute to his old friend, the great American director Samuel Fuller, who appeared in his adaptation of "La vie de boheme".
The images in "Juha" sing and soar, such as the quiet, tender moment when Marja drapes Juha's arm over her in bed. There is no more wistful or quietly devastating moment than the sight of the large, ill-fitted Juha stranded on the side of the road. The one time direct sound is heard, of Shemeikka's sister (Elina Salo) performing a French song in a cafe, the moment has a stunning emotional impact, a feeling of time elegantly, dramatically being reborn.
JUHA
A Sputnik Oy production
An Aki Kaurismaki film
Director-producer-writer-editor: Aki Kaurismaki
Based on the novel by: Juhani Aho
Music: Anssi Tikanmaki
Director of photography: Timo Salminen
Production manager: Ilkka Mertsola
Sound: Jouko Lumme
Set design: Markku Patila, Jukka Salmi
Black and white/stereo
Cast:
Juha: Sakari Kuosmanen
Marja: Kati Outinen
Shemeikka: Andre Wilms
Driver: Marku Peltola
Shemeikka's sister: Elina Salo
Running time --78 minutes
No MPAA rating...
- 2/22/1999
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
IMDb.com, Inc. takes no responsibility for the content or accuracy of the above news articles, Tweets, or blog posts. This content is published for the entertainment of our users only. The news articles, Tweets, and blog posts do not represent IMDb's opinions nor can we guarantee that the reporting therein is completely factual. Please visit the source responsible for the item in question to report any concerns you may have regarding content or accuracy.