Starring: Andre Wilms, Blondin Miguel, Jean-Pierre Daroussin Director: Aki Kaurismaki Category: I (French) Who would have imagined Aki Kaurismaki - the master of dark, deadpan tales about the sorry lives of the modern underclass - would be the one to deliver a radiant ode to human goodness as Europe, again, stands on the precipice of self-implosion?
That's exactly what he has done with Le Havre, a feel-good celebration of a defiant communitarian spirit which runs against the cynicism rearing its ugly head across the self-proclaimed Fortress Europe.
Here, the have-nots in the titular French port city join forces to protect and nurture a teenage African boy stranded among them in the middle of a perilous (and illicit) journey to join his mother in London.
It's not the first time the Finnish cineaste has tackled illegal immigration in his films: in Leningrad Cowboys Meet Moses (1994), he had his Russian rock'n'roll protagonists sneaking across the United States-Mexican border - with a CIA agent in hot pursuit - to appear in what they envisioned as a breakthrough gig in New York.
While that transnational passage was more a pastiche than anything, the one as experienced by Idrissa (Blondin Miguel) seems more grounded in real-life geopolitics, as he finds himself meeting locals who would love to join these migratory waves but couldn't. Early in the film, for example, the clientele in a cafe are seen muttering about better lives in Brittany and Alsace-Lorraine.
Among these jaded individuals is Marcel (Andre Wilms) a former writer who has ditched his literary ambitions and bohemian life to become a shoeshiner in Le Havre. Just as he tries to contend with the suffering of his sick, hospital-bound wife Arletty (Kati Outinen), he finds a new meaning in life as he meets Idrissa, takes him home and becomes a surrogate father to the boy.