LIGHTS IN THE DUSK concludes Aki Kaurismäki series at IFC Center
LIGHTS IN THE DUSK (Aki Kaurismäki, 2006)
IFC Center
323 Sixth Ave. at West Third St.
December 16-18, 11:00 am
212-924-7771
www.ifccenter.com
www.strandreleasing.com
The final installment in his self-described Loser Trilogy (following Drifting Clouds and The Man Without a Past), Lights in the Dusk is another existential masterpiece from Finnish director Aki Kaurismäki. Janne Hyytiäinen stars as Koistinen, a pathetic little security guard who has pipe dreams of starting his own company. A lonely man with no friends — except for Aila (Maria Heiskanen), who runs a late-night hot-dog van and whom he continually shuns — Koistinen is easily taken in by Mirja (Maria Järvenhelmi), a romantic interest who has ulterior motives. But no matter how bad things get for Koistinen — and they get pretty bad — he just wanders his way through it all, preferring to simply accept the consequences, no matter how undeserved, rather than take a more active role in his life. The character has a lot in common with Kati Outinen’s sad-sack, trampled-upon Iris from Kaurismäki’s The Match Factory Girl — in fact, Outinen makes a cameo in Lights in the Dusk as a cashier at a grocery store. The film is screening December 16-18 at 11:00 am, concluding the IFC Center’s Weekend Classics Kaurismäki series that featured nine of his works, shown in conjunction with the theatrical release of his latest, Le Havre, which is still running there as well.