Le Havre Blu-ray

The friendship between a man and an illegal child immigrant is at the heart of this heartfelt tribute to 1930s French films. It's crammed with incidental pleasures, writes Michael Brooke.

Aki Kaurismäki's second French-language film after 1992's La Vie de Bohème (prior knowledge of which is not required, though there are a couple of delectable in-jokes for fans) is his most heartfelt tribute to one of his favourite periods of cinema history, the great if undeservedly neglected 'Popular Front' films of the mid to late 1930s in which Jean Renoir, Marcel Carné and Jean Grémillon brought an intensely poetic sensibility to ostensibly realistic films about the downtrodden, cruelly exploited masses. 

Naturally, Kaurismäki does this too in this deceptively simple tale of Le Havre-based shoeshiner Marcel Marx (André Wilms), whose almost childlike dependence on his wife Arletty (Kati Outinen) is threatened by her being diagnosed with what seems to be terminal cancer - of course, since she's a Kaurismäki heroine, she treats the news as stoically as she would a minor kitchen mishap. At the same time, Marcel accidentally runs into Idrissa, a Gabonese boy wanted by the police (represented by Jean-Pierre Darroussin's marvellously hangdog Inspector Monet) for illegally entering the country, forcing Marcel to choose between what is legally and morally right. 

Working with his regular production team, notably veteran cinematographer Timo Salminen, Kaurismäki transforms a normally rather drab French harbour town into a colourful, sun-drenched French-speaking outpost of what Outinen called 'Akiland', a universe peculiar to this endlessly idiosyncratic filmmaker that's instantly recognisable only a few seconds after arrival - reacting to a client being whacked by mafiosi immediately after getting his shoes shined, Marcel looks on the bright side: at least he had time to pay. 

And as ever with Kaurismäki, the film is crammed with incidental pleasures and absurd details: a pineapple, a sprig of cherry blossom, a Jean-Pierre Léaud cameo, a concert by local rock legend Little Bob and a screen credit for Kaurismäki's own dog Laika (an inveterate scene-stealer) make particularly memorable contributions. 

If Kaurismäki's melodramatic approach to this material is undoubtedly and unashamedly old-fashioned (his other acknowledged models are Douglas Sirk and Yasujiro Ozu), his call for working-class solidarity in the face of official callousness could hardly be more vital today.

Michael Brooke on 19th June 2012
Author of 135 reviews