Express at Cannes: Aki Kaurismaki’s leaves fall tenderly; Wes Anderson is back to being Wes

Fallen Leaves is an extension of Kaurismaki’s working class trilogy Shadows In Paradise, Ariel, and Match Factory Girl, and reminds you of the importance of films that focus on the ordinary to bring out the sublime. Holappa keeps a bottle tucked away in his uniform, glugging back a few sips while on duty, and refuses, pig-headedly, to give up alcohol even when it is clearly something Ansa will not stand for. In the meantime, she brings home a rescue dog (a great candidate for the Palme Dog award), who quickly becomes her faithful shadow. The on-going war in Ukraine is as much a disturbing presence in the film, as are the authoritarian employers with zero compassion for those toiling under them.

These are real people, with real problems, and are vulnerable enough for you to start caring for them. When Ansa and Holappa find their groove, you leave the theatre suffused with warm feelings that linger.

Wes Anderson’s Asteroid City

Wes Anderson returns to the Cannes competition with yet another candy-coloured confection, Asteroid City, just two years after The French Dispatch, a tribute to old-school journalism and the New Yorker, which was far too twee for my liking. But then tweeness is very much an Anderson thing; only if it overrides all else in the film, does it become a deal-breaker.

Happy to report that Asteroid City stays mostly sprightly, if not very substantial, in its attempt to marry the big question—what is the meaning of life—with the specifics of its fictional city known for its observatory and a very Wild West aesthetic complete with a diner, and a knock-kneed cowboy with the twangiest accent I’ve heard in a while. It is 1955, and Asteroid City is abuzz with a confluence of junior school stargazers, their parents and teachers, and government officials milling about trying to maintain order.

Anderson, who’s also written the screenplay, is not overtly bothered about being crystal-clear: whimsy is destroyed by too much clarity. Some of it plays out on a stage, for the other parts, we are transported to this sunny little town where young geniuses bandy about their knowledge of the solar system, and hangdog photographer Augie Steenbeck (Jason Schwartzman) and popular actress Midge Campbell (Scarlett Johansson) indulge in the kind of self-conscious banter that may pass off as romance in this universe. Steenbeck is carting his super-bright teenage boy to the convention, along with his three little girls: a spot of bother forces him to reach out to his wealthy pa-in-law (Tom Hanks) for help.

A stunning visitation from a creature, whose provenance we shall not reveal, throws everyone into a tizzy. Even as the guardians of Asteroid City try making sense of the event, members of Anderson’s dizzying cast (Tilda Swinton, Edward Norton, Adrien Brody, Steve Carrell, Margot Robbie among many other worthies) come and go, doing their bit.

Just spending time with this gathering has its moments, even though you wish that all this fun and frolic was better glued together, and led to something with more heft. Still, I’ll take a bright-hued Anderson who has a character say ‘gadzooks’ (when was the last time you heard someone out of a P G Wodehouse novel say that word?), and another who has this profound line: ‘you can’t wake up if you don’t fall asleep’.

And then there’s the line which feels like the director’s personal mantra: ‘just keep telling the story’.