Kati Outinen Movies

In this bizarre surrealist comedy from France, a handful of oddball characters live in world where people heap strange forms of abuse on animals -- dwarves stage bullfights with rhinos, zoos open restaurants where the privileged can dine on the animals on display, and the wealthy lock themselves into their mansion with the angry pit bulls trained to protect them. In the midst of such madness, a stocky animal handler (Gustave Kervern) who can neither hear nor speak falls in with a pair of dissolute zookeepers (Benoit Delepine and Eric Martin) who are hooked on ketamine and shoot one another with tranquilizer darts for fun. The zookeepers involve their new friend in a crazy scheme to kidnap the pet dog of a very wealthy and extremely large woman, Avida (Velvet), but the three men prove to be wildly inept criminals, and once they're found out, Avida forces them to help her in a plan to take her own life. Featuring a cameo appearance from acclaimed filmmaker Claude Lelouch, Avida was written and directed by Benoit Delepine and Gustave Kervern, who also act in the film; it received its American premiere at the 2007 Tribeca Film Festival. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi

Aki Kaurismaki's The Man Without a Past opens with the title character (Markku Peltola) being savagely beaten. At the hospital he is declared dead, but he sits up and walks out on his own power. He is taken in by a mother and her two sons, discovers an old jukebox that inspires local musicians, and discovers he has skills as a welder. When he becomes unwittingly involved in a bank robbery, and the man is unable to give the police his name, the cops send out feelers trying to figure out the man's identity. Soon his wife appears. The Man Without a Past was screened at the 2002 Cannes Film Festival where it was awarded the Grand Prix, the most storied prize after the Palme D'Or. ~ Perry Seibert, Rovi

Aki Kaurismaki's Juha is the fourth adaptation of this love triangle involving a woman and two men. The original story took place in the 18th century and revolved around a former servant girl, Marja, who is married to plain, simple-minded and older Juha, but in love with Russian salesman and 'Casanova' Shemeikka. Kaurismaki's story is set in the late 1970's, shot silent and furnished with captions to disclose the dialogue. It is meant to be watched with live music, preferably with the score's composer Anssi Tikanmaki conducting his own orchestra. Absence of sound (dialogue) is not really new for Kaurismaki, whose 1990 masterpiece Tulitikkutehtaan tyttö/The Match Factory Girl took 17 minutes before a word was uttered. Instead of imitating silent movies, Kaurismaki placed his version of Juha at the moment of the history of silent film when some sound could be used. Acting style and images start somewhere in the late 1920's and towards the end slowly move into the '50's B-movie style. With Timo Salmien behind the lenses, who has been collaborating as cinematographer with Aki and brother Mika Kaurismaki since 1981, and some of the regular cast (such as André Wilms, Elina Salo, Sakari Kuosmanen and Kati Outinen), Juha is distinctively a Kaurismaki film. Published in 1911, well-known Finnish author Juhani Aho's tragic drama has been filmed three times before. The first was Johan in 1920 by Mauritz Stiller, who staged it in provincial Sweden (which was a strange locale for the Finnish audiences). The second, Juha, was brought to screen in 1937 by Nyrki Tapiovaara, who was faithful to the script, but the film was not very successful. The third Juha was by Toivo Sarkka in 1956, and it was also the first Finnish film shot in color. It was the worst of the three, according to film historians, looking like a picture postcard; nevertheless, it was a big box-office hit. ~ Gönül Dönmez-Colin, Rovi

A married couple struggles with the repercussions of unexpected unemployment in this wry comedy drama from Finnish filmmaker Aki Kaurismaki. Ilona, the wife, works as restaurant hostess and her husband Lauri drives a tram. Though the couple has recently lost a child, they both seem at peace and happy. One night Ilona comes home and finds that Lauri has purchased a beautiful television on credit. Shortly thereafter disaster strikes when Ilona's workplace closes and Lauri gets caught in a maelstrom of downsizing. Neither is able to find suitable work right away and as time crawls by, they become humiliated and testy with each other. Eventually Ilona gets a job cooking and bartending in a nameless sleazy dive while her husband, after having to sell their television and car, turns to booze. Things look bad for the marriage when suddenly Ilona decides to open a restaurant. With the backing of her former boss and using her coworkers, she and Lauri open the successful Worker's Rest café and find renewed hope. ~ Sandra Brennan, Rovi

In this Finnish-German comedy two mis-fit men discover that they need more than body language to express their interest in two travelling women. Cigar smoking, coffee slurping Valto works at home for his mother. The day she runs out of coffee is the day he locks her in a cupboard and takes-off after first swiping the cash from her purse. Before hitting the road, he picks up Reino, his oily-haired buddy with rock-n-roll affectations. Together they cruise the back roads of Finland. Reino guzzles vodka and Valto his coffee. Two comely hitchhikers appear. They are the thin Tatiana from Estonia, and the chunky Klaudia from Russia. Tatiana only knows enough Finnish to ask for a lift. Both women seem interested in the two men who are both too intimidated to speak. The four travel in silence and then spend an innocent night in a hotel. ~ Sandra Brennan, Rovi

The plot of William Shakespeare's Hamlet had already been transposed to the modern business world twice before the release of Hamlet Goes Business. These earlier films, Strange Illusion (46) and The Rest is Silence (60), are nearly as dour as the Shakespeare original. Only Finnish director Aki Kaurismaki was able to see the dark humor and satirical implications of such a time-displacement effort: his modernization of Hamlet was set in a rubber duck factory, making all the passions torn to tatters seem slightly ridiculous. While the film follows the traditional tale of a son seeking revenge for his father's murder, director Kaurismaki never misses an opportunity to skewer the business world, just as he'd been doing in collaboration with his writer/director brother Mika ever since 1982. Also released in some countries as Hamlet Gets Business, this film was first seen in Finland as Hamlet Liikemaailmassa. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

This tongue-in-cheek fairytale is adapted from an opera composed by Aulis Sallinen and written by Paavo Haavikko about a whimsical, attempted voyage to Paris by the King of England, his Prime Minister and his retinue. A few women in the traveling group appear to embody specific female traits such as shyness and its opposite, and the men are either self-serving schemers or lazy. The journey is not without incident since the entourage end up at the Siege of Calais and engage the King of France in battle. Alternating between song and spoken narration, neither the characters nor their situations are meant to be taken too seriously (as when a band of medieval men push along a stalled Volkswagen). ~ Eleanor Mannikka, Rovi