La Vie de Bohème

Three penniless artists in Paris: the Irish writer Marcel, the Albanian painter Rodolfo and the French composer Schaunard. Nobody buys their work, they cannot pay the rent, they lend each other money and share what food there is. Rodolfo meets Mimi. Then he is deported, comes back, and Mimi falls ill. Aki Kaurismäki wrote and directed. The source is Henri Murger's nineteenth-century novel Scènes de la vie de bohème, the same book behind Puccini's La Bohème. Kaurismäki shot it in Paris, in French and in black and white. The telling strips out the sentiment of the opera entirely and puts his own register in its place: blank faces, measured sentences, tragedy delivered like a joke. The same story ends in tears at the opera and with a shrug here. The cast is made of the people he works with repeatedly, and his dog Laika appears in the film. Who it is for: viewers who like Kaurismäki and films that tell feeling by suppressing it. Who it is not for: anyone expecting the swell of the opera. The film is deliberately cold and never lets the characters' pain reach their faces.