Yesterday I watched this film straight after Kaurismaki's film of the same year 'I Hired a Contract Killer', and this struck me as a far superior film, possibly because I'd prefer to see drab Finnish locations than (the usual) drab British locations and maybe also because of the annoying poor acting from Jean-Pierre Leaud's female co-star (my Finnish friend asked me why the women sounded like a 'learn the English language' tape). Overall the film seemed to be a generally better piece of cinema than 'Contract Killer'.'The Match Factory Girl' is a continuation of Kaurismaki's trade-mark minimal style (and also content)in which a young (match-factory working) girl leads a depressingly sad life in which she is used and abused by everyone around. Kaurismaki's films (to me at least) can be described as deadpan Bergman in silence, and yesterday i heard that Aki grew up with autism, this is partly the reason of the lack of communication between characters and also the low amount of dialogue. The film is not as depressing as sounds though, and is lifted by Kaurismaki's use of deadpan humour. For any Kaurismaki (add to this Jarmusch and Kitano)fan, this film will not disappoint, although it is pretty difficult to track down.
