European Films

Finnish director Aku Louhimies at the Karlovy Vary Film Festival. Photo portrait by Fabrizio Maltese for european-films.net, July 2006. All rights reserved.

With Valkoinen kaupunki (Frozen City), Finnish director Aku Louhimies returns to the frozen and snow-covered streets of Helsinki after his recent international success Paha Maa (Frozen Land). His new film offers an intimate portrait of an essentially good young father driven to desperation by the ugly divorce from his wife and then accused of an act he cannot remember committing. Boyd van Hoeij, the editor of european-films.net, spoke with the director at the Karlovy Film Festival in the Czech Republic, where the film had its premiere in the International Competition and would eventually walk away with the Europa Cinemas label, the FIPRESCI prize and a Don Quijote Special Mention. The film will premiere in Finland on November 17.

Valkoinen kaupunki is essentially a character study of its protagonist, the taxi driver Veli-Matti, played with unusual intensity by actor Janne Virtanen (who also had a small role in Paha Maa and originated the role of Veli-Matti in the TV-series Irtiottoja/Fragments). The director sums the film's themes up thus: "It is about loneliness and divorce, and we try to tell a story about real people, who have real feelings that are more nuanced than simply black or white. The actors spent a lot of time with the children [who portray their offspring], but their scenes together were not super-rehearsed, so there is a sense of reality at work. We also tried to make the characters talk as normal or natural as possible".

The Finnish capital plays an important role in both Paha Maa and Valkoinen kaupunki, and in both films it is during the dark and cold winter that Helsinki is shown. Says the director of the importance of the city: "We used actors who lived in or were born in Helsinki. The dark portrait of the city in winter is quite controversial: there is an enormous difference between Helsinki in summer and in winter". The closeness of the two films is emphasised by the English language titles Frozen Land and Frozen City, but the original titles are not that similar: "In Finnish, the titles are different: Valkoinen kaupunki means something like 'White City', whereas Paha maa is indeed 'Frozen Land'. I suppose the English translation is a marketing thing, though it is true it can suggest a connection that is not really there in Finnish eyes".

On the main differences between the two films besides the smaller canvas (from 'Land' to 'City'), the director says: "Paha Maa was an independent film project -- inspired by a Tolstoy story -- whereas Valkoinen kaupunki is a spin-off from a successful TV series called Irtiottoja (Fragments), so the audience will already be familiar with the main character". Louhimies also insists on the difference in size of the two projects: "Valkoinen kaupunki was also made on a much lower budget, or actually without any money. We used professional actors and a professional crew, but all the technical stuff probably cost less than €1,000. We improvised as much as possible".

The new film has a distinct Scandinavian or Northern European flavour, facing very dark themes head-on without getting overly sentimental or trying to draw a particular emotional response from the audience. Louhimies sees his small experimental film as "Closest in spirit to the 10 Commandments [or “Decalogue”] series from Polish director Kieslowski [which were also originally made for television], where he then extrapolated material to make some feature films [A Short Film About Killing, A Short Film About Love].  It is true that the film has a distinctly Nordic sensibility, though, even a Russian literary influence, like Paha Maa".

The obvious Russian literary influence would be Dostoyevski's Crime and Punishment, which together with Martin Scorsese's Taxi Driver is explicitly referenced in the film several times. Louhimies explains: "Well, there is no hidden secret code or anything, for those who do not get the references! If you haven’t seen or read these works the film still works fine. But what unites these three stories is that they are all about how a civilised man can easily loose that civilisation".

On the question if the director's next project will again be as bleak as his two previous films, he answers with a small smile: "No, not at all, though it does have elements that are drawn from life, like these projects. It is called Riisuttu mies (Man Exposed) and is written by an ex-priest. It is experimental in a different way in that it is quite comic and has Father Camillo elements. It is about a priest who wants to please everyone and mixes comic elements with realism and has a tone similar to Fargo". Let us hope Louhimies continues to please the Finnish and worlwide audiences as well, whether it be in a comedic or dramatic vein.

Related items:

>Film review of Valkoinen kaupunki (Frozen City)
>Trailer (with English subtitles) of Valkoinen kaupunki (Frozen City)
>Aku Louhimies portraits by Fabrizio Maltese
>Aku Louhimies at the Karlovy Vary Film Festival press conference (from our photo diary)