Aki Kaurismäki’s latest work “Fallen Leaves”, which was chosen as the Finnish entry for Best International Film Oscar in this year and then was recently included in the shortlist, is a seemingly bleak but ultimately heartwarming romantic comedy to remember. Just like many of Kaurismäki’s previous works such as “The Match Factory Girl” (1990), it will demand some patience from you due to its very dry sense of humor as well as its languid narrative pacing, but its alternatively amusing and poignant romantic story will surprise you as showing more heart and care than you thought at first.

During the early part of the film, we are introduced to the daily lives of two different working-class people living in Helsinki, which incidentally looks as cold, stark, and drab as you can expect from the background of a Kaurismäki film. Although the occasional radio news about the Russian invasion in Ukraine suggests that the story is set in the early 2020s, an urban neighborhood surrounding the two main characters of the film seems to be stuck in the late 20th century at times, and that is surely one of more amusing aspects of the film.

One of these two persons is a single woman named Ansa (Alma Pöysti). She works at a local supermarket as one of its zero-hour contract employees, and you may get a small laugh as noticing how she and several other employees are constantly watched by a rather aggressive guard who looks like being too serious about his job. After her work time, Ansa usually spends her spare time alone at her little shabby residence, and her silent but palpably melancholic loneliness feels all the more evident to us.

On the other side, we also get to know a guy whose name is not mentioned until the middle point of the story. He is a metalworker who also happens to be a high-functioning alcoholic, and there is some tension from how he manages to hide this serious problem of his at his workplace. He often drinks whenever nobody is watching, and a close colleague of his knows that too well, but the colleague does not stop him much while going outside along with him for drinking from time to time.

As these two dudes are spending another drinking night at a local karaoke bar, they happen to encounter Ansa and her friend. This encounter is rather brief as the metalworker’s friend hilariously fails to attract the attention of Ansa’ friend, but Ansa happens to encounter the metalworker again not long after that, though their second encounter is not very pleasant because he is quite drunk to say the least.

Meanwhile, things become gloomier for both Ansa and him. While Ansa gets fired for just being compassionate to some homeless guy in the need of some food, the metalworker eventually comes to lose his current job when his drunken status is exposed to everyone at his workplace by accident. Ansa later gets employed at a local pub, but its owner turns out to be involved with drug dealing, and, not so surprisingly, Ansa soon has to search for a new job.

Around that point, Ansa meets the metalworker again. They slowly find themselves more attracted to each other, so they decide to have a movie date at a local arthouse movie theater which will delight any serious movie fan for a good reason. After having a fun with a certain recent movie by Jim Jarmusch, Ansa gives him a note on which she wrote her phone number, but, alas, he happens to lose that note by coincidence.

It is not much of a spoiler to tell you that these two main characters will eventually come across each other again later, but the movie takes its time as rolling them along its slow narrative, and Kaurismäki steadily serves us a series of small deadpan moments deftly balanced well between humor and misery. The characters in the film usually look and feel quite detached, but they are also somehow pretty funny and engaging to observe under Kaurismäki’s effortlessly witty direction, and we come to like and care about them while frequently tickled by their dryly humorous interactions.

The movie certainly depends a lot on the low-key chemistry between its two lead performers, whose effective comic performances come to us as the heart and soul of the story. While Alma Pöysti, who deservedly received a Golden Globe nomination for this film, is somberly endearing even when she does not signify much on the surface, Jussi Vatanen ably complements his co-star as a flawed man who may actually be changed by an unexpected possibility of love, and Janne Hyytiäinen and Nuppu Koivu are also solid as the two crucial supporting characters in the story.

In conclusion, “Fallen Leaves”, which won the Jury Prize when it was premiered at the Cannes Film Festival early in this year, is another impressive achievement from Kaurismäki. Although I belatedly watched some of his early works after encountering “Le Havre” (2011), I soon came to admire and ennoy that distinctive mood, wit, and style of his films, and I am certainly delighted to see that he still can impress us a lot even though it has been 40 years since he made his first feature film “Crime and Punishment” (1983). In short, this is another highlight of this year, and you may come to have a bit of belief in the power of love after watching this little charming piece of work.