Downbeat, downbeaten

An interesting, if faintly depresssing film from Kaurismäki, with a fairly cold, emotionless, miserable protagonist! Most people are deadpan in his films, which occasionally can be funny, but not really in this one. The protagonist laughs once in the entire film, when he is in prison!

The story is slight, and is basically about ordinary people living pretty mundane lives. A bit of excitement comes into the main character's life, but he ends up much worse off than he was before.

The picture quality on the DVD is very good, and it looks remarkably sharp upscaled on a high-definition TV.

There's an interview with the director, but I couldn't really follow what he was talking about, even though he was speaking in English!