A disappointment from Kaurismaki in this way too simplistic and monotonous tribute to silent era filmmaking about a young and naïve wife of a farmer husband who is lured away by a rich old man promising a better life. 

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On my mission to complete as many Aki Kaurismaki’s films as possible, Juha may seem interesting but is ultimately an inconsequential oddity. 

Made in between two exceptional films, Drifting Clouds (1996) and The Man without a Past (2002), Juha is the Finnish director’s answer to black-and-white silent-era movies. 

The story is very simple: Juha, a farmer and his wife, Marja, are living contentedly though without much excitement in their lives, but when a rich man with a faulty car drops by, Marja becomes tempted by the prospect of ‘running away’ with the guy with the moolah. 

A cautionary tale of not succumbing to our desires, Juha is frankly rather monotonous in its storytelling, and surprisingly predictable for a Kaurismaki film. 

His brand of droll humour also seems to be dialled down here, hence there isn’t anything significant that we can latch onto, except the conceit of the silent film trope, backed by generally uninspired use of music (which we can rarely say of the director whose pictures are often punctuated by brilliant choices of diegetic or non-diegetic songs). 

“You are no more his than a bird that he has caught and caged.”

It could have worked better as a short as Juha does at times feel like a feature-length final-year project of a student director showing that he or she is adept with shooting a film in a prescribed style. 

Although Kaurismaki regular Kati Outinen exudes silent film star quality with her increasingly conflicted facial expressions, that aforesaid rich man with nefarious aims does seem a bit miscast—one look and anyone in the right mind can tell of his ‘bad guy’ vibes. 

I wonder why Marja is so naïve.  But perhaps that’s the cheeky intention of Kaurismaki, allowing things to be very on the nose. 

Alas, Juha is a disappointment though it may still interest completists.  His black-and-white tribute to classical noir and Shakespeare, Hamlet Goes Business (1987), is so much more enthralling and funnier. 

Grade: C+

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