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The Match Factory Girl, 1990
A young woman named Iris (Kati Outinen) lives in a city in Finland with her mother and stepfather, working days in a match factory and spending her nights unsuccessfully looking for love in nightclubs. The course of Iris's life changes for the worse when she hooks up with a man named Aarne (Vesa Vierikko) she meets in a club.
There are plenty of films that take a stark look at the bleak lives of people who live lives of quiet desperation. The Match Factory Girl takes this premise and then delivers a third act that feels at once like a natural progression of events and a shocking left turn.
This is a film where not using the word "bleak" in every sentence is going to be a real challenge, because good gracious! Everything about the film seems to compound the banal misery of the main character. The news that her parents watch in the background is full of death and tragedy. When she is at the nightclub, the camera looks down on her and her desire to be wanted is painful and palpable. Even when Iris dares to think that things might be looking up, her hopes are clearly so fragile that it's not a matter of if they get smashed, just exactly how.
That third act, though. Wow. I suppose it hits so hard because a woman like Iris is the kind of person who we expect to only turn anger inward at herself. To see it directed outward, and in such a cool yet brutal manner, is astonishing. At the same time, however, what most marks Iris's experiences is a total lack of regard for her health, happiness, and spirit by anyone she crosses paths with, whether they are family or strangers. Maybe turnabout is fair play. (Okay, maybe not quite, but you certainly understand how Iris gets to that point).
The movie starts with a large piece of wood being rendered down to splinters to serve as matchsticks. This brutal whittling and grinding down serves as a perfect analogy for the main character. Ground down, splintered. But you know what a match eventually is made to do.
The Match Factory Girl, 1990
A young woman named Iris (Kati Outinen) lives in a city in Finland with her mother and stepfather, working days in a match factory and spending her nights unsuccessfully looking for love in nightclubs. The course of Iris's life changes for the worse when she hooks up with a man named Aarne (Vesa Vierikko) she meets in a club.
There are plenty of films that take a stark look at the bleak lives of people who live lives of quiet desperation. The Match Factory Girl takes this premise and then delivers a third act that feels at once like a natural progression of events and a shocking left turn.
This is a film where not using the word "bleak" in every sentence is going to be a real challenge, because good gracious! Everything about the film seems to compound the banal misery of the main character. The news that her parents watch in the background is full of death and tragedy. When she is at the nightclub, the camera looks down on her and her desire to be wanted is painful and palpable. Even when Iris dares to think that things might be looking up, her hopes are clearly so fragile that it's not a matter of if they get smashed, just exactly how.
That third act, though. Wow. I suppose it hits so hard because a woman like Iris is the kind of person who we expect to only turn anger inward at herself. To see it directed outward, and in such a cool yet brutal manner, is astonishing. At the same time, however, what most marks Iris's experiences is a total lack of regard for her health, happiness, and spirit by anyone she crosses paths with, whether they are family or strangers. Maybe turnabout is fair play. (Okay, maybe not quite, but you certainly understand how Iris gets to that point).
The movie starts with a large piece of wood being rendered down to splinters to serve as matchsticks. This brutal whittling and grinding down serves as a perfect analogy for the main character. Ground down, splintered. But you know what a match eventually is made to do.