Drifting Clouds

Aki Kaurismaki’s 1996 comedy-drama honed his tender, deadpan style to profound new levels, and his uniquely stylised depiction of a vintage, melancholic, blue collar Helsinki.

Middle-aged couple Ilona and Lauri are down on their luck, when they both lose their jobs in close succession. They pull together to try and open their own restaurant, facing down major obstacles in a stoical, gruffly affectionate manner. A gently profound and unsentimental film with a winning streak of absurdist humour.

“Kaurismaki has said that Drifting Clouds is bound at one end by the grief of The Bicycle Thief and at the other by the joy of It’s a Wonderful Life, with “the Finnish reality” somewhere in between. It’s another way of outlining the difficult synthesis produced by Finnish tangos and enormous quantities of vodka, endless summer days and endless winter nights.” — Jonathan Rosenbaum, The Chicago Reader