“L’argent circule au crepuscule.”

‘Le Harve’, directed by Aki Kaurismäki in 2011, is a Finnish comedy drama set in the French coastal port. André Wilms plays Marcel Marx, a former writer who has turned to shining shoes for money. He lives with his wife who looks after him and keeps his money safe. When she becomes ill he discovers how much he relies on her, but she and her doctors conspire to conceal the true nature of her illness. He then becomes entangled in a plot involving an illegal immigrant and the police. Compared to Kaurismäki’s earlier films such as ‘Ariel’ and the bleak ‘The Match Factory Girl’, this is a light-hearted story where the pathos and comedy are balanced well. The look of the film, as with Kaurismäki’s other movies, is gritty and unadorned – the French city replacing Helsinki but retaining that feeling of abandonment and decaying despair. The characters come from the setting, seemingly belonging to their space, but there is also a sense of the characters trying to break free of the deprived city, or at least trying to thrive as well as survive.

Would I recommend it? Yes – it doesn’t have quite the power of ‘The Match Factory Girl’, and feels fairly minor, but as a vignette into an elderly life it is reminiscent of great realist movies like ‘Umberto D.’, and that would be my choice as a double bill.