Arguably Kaurismaki’s bleakest film, this portrait of a woman trapped in work and domestic monotony spirals into quiet doom and gloom as she contemplates a drastic action.

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Well, I guess that’s where the name of the Germany-based international sales agent, The Match Factory, comes from. 

So, I finally completed the ‘Proletariat Trilogy’ by Aki Kaurismaki.  These three films—Shadows in Paradise (1986), Ariel (1988), and The Match Factory Girl (1990)—elevated the Finnish auteur’s position as one of the finest filmmakers to emerge from that part of Europe at the time. 

My favourite of the trio is Ariel, and in my books, probably Kaurismaki’s best, after having already seen about 90% of his filmography.  The Match Factory Girl is the bleakest I’ve ever seen him go, a far cry from the bittersweet optimism of the other two films. 

Kati Outinen, the face of numerous Kaurismaki’s pictures, plays the titular figure whose monotonous work at a factory is matched miserably by the stifling silence of her domestic space, where she supports her mother and stepfather with her meagre salary. 

“Nothing could touch me less than your affection.”

She pays the rent, fixes dinner, and goes to bed.  Any ‘excitement’ in this woman’s dour life comes in the form of the occasional night out in the pub, cold beer in hand as she waits for a potential suitor to ask her for a dance.  Not one for a long time, until a man grabs her arm, ironically starting a spiral downwards into doom and gloom. 

There’s also doom and gloom in other parts of the world, as Kaurismaki efficiently alludes to, through several interjected shots of television news (we are made aware temporally that it’s early June 1989, a fateful month with the Tiananmen Square student massacre, and the death of Iranian Revolution mastermind Ayatollah Khomeini, etc.). 

However, nothing seems to compare with the sheer loneliness and desperation of Outinen’s character, who, with nothing to lose, decides to do something drastic. 

There’s less deadpan humour here than in other Kaurismaki’s movies, though the director’s selection of counterpointingly upbeat songs remains spot-on.  At only 69 minutes, it is also one of his briskest efforts.  

Grade: B+

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