Cinema
The Match Factory Girl
Tulitikkutehtaan tyttö
Aki Kaurismäki · 1990
Synopsis
Iris works on the line in a noisy match factory. In the evening, she lives with her mother and stepfather, whom she supports and who ignore her in front of the television. She dreams of a great love, buys herself a dress to go dancing, is reproached for it, and a man she meets in a bar spends a night with her before disappearing. Pregnant, abandoned, she takes it all, almost without a word.
Context
Third part of its author's working-class trilogy, it was released on 12 January 1990. Co-produced by Villealfa and the Swedish Film Institute, photographed by Timo Salminen, it was shot on interior sets in the match factory at Vaajakoski in the spring of 1989. Kati Outinen plays Iris, with Elina Salo and Esko Nikkari. In Berlin, in 1990, it received the Interfilm ecumenical jury prize and a mention from the Catholic Office, and it won four Jussi awards, including those for direction and female performance.
Who it is for
A film of sixty-nine minutes, almost without dialogue, in Finnish; the impassivity of the actors is the mark of the director and is at first disconcerting.
Prizes and reception
Voted joint best Finnish film of all time by sixty critics in 1992; the New York Times counts it among the thousand best films.