Lights in the Dusk – 2006 Kaurismäki

Aki Kaurismäki’s Lights in the Dusk marks the final film in his Finland Trilogy which includes Drifting Clouds (1996) and The Man Without a Past (2002).
Lights in the Dusk gets off to a bit of a bumpy start with Janne Hyytiäinen cast in the lead as Seppo. He must be the youngest and most handsome of Kaurismäki’s protagonists over the years and decades. This feels like a kind of betrayal (he is the auteur that has often worked with Matti Pellonpää and Kati Outinen—Outinen has a small role as a check out girl here).
Seppo is blue collar working class at least- a security guard that has been ostracized and is fed up.
Trademark short length feature- 75 minute- minimalism not just in style
Seppo is beat up—just like just about every Kaurismäki protagonist (happens twice to Seppo actually- once by men in a bar who lock up their dog, and once by gangsters). These are harsh, unforgiving worlds in Kaurismäki’s oeuvre- realism- but the ironic, comic tone preservers.

Cinematic paintings of the melancholic female hot dog diner worker—akin to Edward Hopper’s Nighthawks painting

Kaurismäki goes back to the living room arrangement at the 29-minute mark
Minimal yellow background—the décor and visual design match the sparse dialogue which matches the running time
Though they are certainly kindred spirits and Jim Jarmusch comes up often when discussing Kaurismäki—they are both unique enough- their own pace and rhythms- both now have ten or more archiveable films in their career.
At the 53-minute mark the diner worker is writing a letter to him. Seppo is in prison.
The colored drink is foreground left, background right is the houseplant, Seppo is embracing the frame

Kaurismäki’s patented sparse living room arrangements as well- simple yet elegant.

Kaurismäki is well aware of the visual poetics here holding this frame in the halfway house night shelter at the 59-minute mark looking out the window