'Le Havre': a 4 star immigration fairy tale
Marcel Marx (Andre Wilms) and Idrissa (Blondin Miguel) in " Le Havre," directed by Aki Kaurismaki . Credit: Sputnik Oy/Marja-Leena Hukkanen
If Finland had been a power in Africa, "Le Havre" might have been called "Helsinki." In this gin-dry immigration fairy tale, Finnish director Aki Kaurismaki needed the language of the colonized and colonizer to be the film's shared tongue -- of Marcel, the down-on-his-luck shoe-shiner played by André Wilms, and the young African refugee Idrissa (Blondin Miguel) who shows up on his Calais doorstep.
Identity and immigration -- and the effect of the latter on the former -- are Kaurismaki's big themes here. So is the legacy of colonialism on its perpetrators. The smaller ideas, if that's what they are, include love, charity, shared humanity and our hunger for happy endings in a world cheap on joy.
Kaurismaki's alchemical mix of wit, irony and melodrama has seldom been more affecting. Marcel, who lives a hand-to-mouth existence, isn't aware that his hospitalized wife, Arletty (Kaurismaki regular Kati Outinen), is dying of cancer, when Idrissa, an escapee from a cargo container full of Gabonese illegals, appears before him. Marcel's instinct -- and that of all his neighbors -- is to protect and hide the boy from the authorities.
The fantasy elements -- which may include "Le Havre's" portrayal of French tolerance re: Muslim emigres -- include the magical consistency of light and shadow throughout the film, which in their artifice play counterpoint to both the naturalism of the story and the vague sense of the time in which everything is taking place (Le Havre is a French port, heavily bombed during World War II). These disparate elements imbue the film with an ethereal glow, which is only heightened by an ending some might see as easy, but which will also break some hearts.
PLOT A reprobate Frenchmen with a dying wife finds himself in loco parentis to a refugee boy from Gabon. Unrated
CAST André Wilms, Kati Outinen, Blondin Miguel, Jean-Pierre Daroussin.
LENGTH 1:43
PLAYING AT Cinema Arts Centre, Huntington
BOTTOM LINE Aki Kaurismaki's trademark juxtaposition of irony and heartbreak makes for one of the year's more human and subtly humorous films. (In French with English subtitles.)
