La vie de bohème (1992) 7.4
Artists' life in Paris Director:Aki Kaurismäki |
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La vie de bohème (1992) 7.4
Artists' life in Paris Director:Aki Kaurismäki |
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| Cast overview, first billed only: | |||
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Matti Pellonpää | ... | |
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Evelyne Didi | ... | |
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André Wilms | ... | |
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Kari Väänänen | ... | |
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Christine Murillo | ... | |
| Jean-Pierre Léaud | ... |
Blancheron
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Laika | ... |
Baudelaire
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Carlos Salgado | ... |
Garcon de café
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Alexis Nitzer | ... |
Henri Bernard
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Sylvie Van den Elsen | ... |
Mme. Bernard
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Gilles Charmant | ... |
Groupe rock
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Dominique Marcas | ... |
Brocanteuse
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Samuel Fuller | ... |
Gassot
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Jean-Paul Wenzel | ... |
Francis
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| Louis Malle | ... |
Gentleman
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Three penniless artists become friends in modern-day Paris: Rodolfo, an Albanian painter with no visa, Marcel, a playwright and magazine editor with no publisher, and Schaunard, a post-modernist composer of execrable noise. Rodolfo falls in love with Mimi, a barmaid. The day he asks her to move in with him, he is deported. Six months later, he sneaks back to Paris, and Mimi leaves her new boyfriend to be with him. Conflicts arise, especially around their poverty, and soon Mimi and Rodolfo separate, as do Marcel and his Musette. The three men scrape together a meal to celebrate All Saints' Day, and Mimi arrives, ill. Can her friends bring her back to health? Can love rekindle? Written by <jhailey@hotmail.com>
Imagine a Finnish director making a film that's as much a tribute to French film as a parody of its worst excesses, and you have a fair idea of what La Vie de Boheme is about. Aki Kaurismaki uses his thoroughly deadpan comic approach to render the lives of a group of pathetic artists in France, none of whom are even close to being artists (except in their own minds). In fact, it's easy for the uninitiated to take the film very seriously, given Kaurismaki's dry comic touch.
I caught this at the SF International Film Festival, where a fair part of the audience (including myself) was caught up in laughter - while admiring the painterly black and white photography and perfectly pitched performances. Those uncomfortable with a Jim jarmusch style of post- modernism might even feel lost from time to time. But all of Kaurismaki's film's are comedies, some more outrageous than others, and this one is about as perfect in conception as you might hope.