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AKI KAURISMÄKI COLLECTION VOL.3
Aki Kaurismäki's deadpan, ironic and idiosyncratic films have established him as one of modern European cinema’s most accomplished filmmakers.This box set presents four of his remarkable and highly acclaimed features.
CRIME AND PUNISHMENT
- Kaurismäki’s first feature follows the descent into crime of Rahikainen, a slaughterhouse worker and former lawstudent, who murders a businessman and then begins a tense game of cat and mouse with the police. Effectively updating Dostoevsky’s great novel to 1980s Helsinki, this remarkably assured debut offers a sharp critique of Finnish society.
Finland 1983, Colour, 93 minutes, 16:9, Dolby Digital 2.0
CALAMARI UNION
- A group of men, all bar one called Frank, abandon their downtrodden neighbourhood in search of Eira –
a near mythical district across town that promises a better life. Kaurismäki’s second features details their misadventures along the way with deadpan humour and rock and roll attitude.
Finland/Germany 1985, B&w, 80 minutes, 16:9, Dolby Digital 2.0
HAMLET GOES BUSINESS
- In this wicked and hilarious satire of the corporate world, Kaurismäki liberally updates Shakespeare’s tragedy as a hard-boiled noir b-movie. Finnish comic Pirkka-Pekka Petelius plays an irresponsible playboy who finds himself involved in a vicious boardroom power struggle with his uncle, who plans to sell off his company’s assets in order to corner the market on Swedish rubber ducks.
Finland 1987, 86 minutes, 16:9, Dolby Digital 2.0
LA VIE DE BOHÈME
- Freely adapted from Henri Murger’s 1851 novel, this is Kaurismäki’s highly individual take on the story of three bohemian artists – a poet, a painter and a composer – set in a timeless Paris. shifting between heartbreaking drama and black humour, the fine cast features cameos from Jean-Pierre Léaud, Sam Fuller and Louis Malle.
Finland 1992, 100 minutes, 16:9, Dolby Digital 5.1
