The second part of a loose trilogy by Finnish cult director Aki Kaurismaki, this 1988 feature was preceded by Shadows in Paradise (1986) and followed by The Match Factory Girl (1989). Kaurismaki seems bent at times on remaking a proletarian Warners melodrama of the 30s (as in The Match Factory Girl, his postmodernist models seem to be Bresson and Fassbinder), albeit with rock tunes on the sound track. A taciturn hero (Turo Pajala) leaves Lapland for Helsinki after the mine employing him and his father shuts down; en route he’s mugged and robbed of his savings. He winds up moving in with a divorced meter maid and eventually finds himself edged into a life of crime. Wittily laconic in style and attractively sharp in its images, it’s the kind of low-budget genre movie they don’t make so well anymore, at least not in the U.S. In Finnish with subtitles. 73 min. (JR) Read more
A candid and entertaining look at Madonna’s 1990 Blond Ambition tour that mainly alternates between grainy black-and-white backstage/offstage footage and certain numbers from the touring show that were shot in color. The young director, Alek Keshishian, had been directing music videos since 1986, and this movie looks it, for better and for worse: there’s a nervous tendency to crosscut between scenes and between onstage and offstage footage that keeps things constantly moving but often prevents the numbers and certain documentary segments from being appreciated in their entirety. It generally works better as a mosaic self-portrait (Madonna served as executive producer) than as a concert film, and–not too surprisingly–what comes across is mainly the star’s likable desire to be both naughty and responsible, conscientious and silly: she’s a prima donna who plays mother hen with her troupe, stoutly defends her show against censors (but seems perfectly willing to have it cut to shreds for the purposes of this movie), and is energetically on at every minute. Warren Beatty, Kevin Costner, and Sandra Bernhard are among the brief celebrity walk-ons (1991). (JR) Read more
Chantal Akerman’s French-Belgian musical, set in a shopping mall, and patterned more after the rondelets of Jacques Demy, such as Lola and The Young Girls of Rochefort, than after Hollywood models. It has a touching score and a likable cast (including Delphine Seyrig, Charles Denner, Fanny Cottencon, Myriam Boyer, John Berry, and Jean-Francois Balmer), but it never ignites to the degree it wants to. Part of the problem is that Akerman’s considerable talents–her eye for composition and her penchant for melancholic moods–are not especially suited to the musical form, and the strain shows. The crisscrossing characters and multiple mini-plots carry some interest and feeling, but the movie aches for the sort of movement and rhythm that is beyond its grasp; the absence of choreography hardly helps. But this is still worth seeing as one of the most ambitious efforts of a strikingly original independent. Script by Akerman, Jean Gruault, Pascal Bonitzer, Henry Bean, and Leora Barish (1986). (JR) Read more
