The Match Factory Girl (1992)

Though this is the story about the Helsinki native Iiris, this story can easily be the story of any modern woman. It is the lack of "remarkable" and grandiose quality of this film that makes it so powerful. It portrays reality as clearly as possible. The photography is clinical which forces the audience to fully engage in the mundane, secretly heartbreaking universe of Iiris. The complete lack of glamor forces us to see the modern woman's suffering as it is, rather than the fantasy (a la Sex in the City) that we have been spoon-fed. I would rather be told the truth than to be told a lie or live in denial about our reality. If we don't clearly see the problems of our reality, we can never identify what it is we need to grow and change. Though Iiris chose to destroy her world rather than create a new life that she would more enjoy, I completely understand why she chose to do so. The mark of a good director is to make you care about the fate of a character. Kaurismaki did this in spades, so thank you.

To say that nobody makes movies like so-and-so tells us nothing about the kind of film we are watching yet one has only to say the name Aki Kaurismaki and you know that no-one else makes movies quite like him and you know exactly what you are going to get. Kaurismaki's movies are mostly short, funny in a black, very sad sort of way and to say they are minimalist is ... well, something of an understatement to say the least. He is one of the great directors, though the very simplicity of his work might make people think otherwise."The Match Factory Girl" is one of his very best films. Dialogue is kept to a minimum, (before any of the characters actually speak we hear a news report and a song). Indeed, there are times when you feel this could just as easily have worked as a silent film as Kaurismaki clearly knows that you don't need words to convey what is happening or to explain the emotions that are on display.The Match Factory girl of the title is Iris, (a superb Kati Outinen), who dreams of escaping her dead-end job in the local match factory and ends up pregnant after a one-night stand. This unplanned for event is the catalyst that prompts her to take some kind of action that will radically alter her situation in a way you are not likely to expect.There isn't really much to it. It clocks in at an economical 66 minutes and it is like the perfect short story. Perhaps we wouldn't want to, or don't really need to, spend any more time with Iris than we have to, (she's not an attractive character in any way). It only takes the short running time of this picture to tell us all we need to know about her and as the film progresses our initial apathy turns into a kind of grudging admiration. Small, yes; minimal, most definitely and really rather wonderful.

This is a downbeat story of a young woman, Iris, who works on an assembly line in a match stick factory in Finland. Iris' life would give testament to the truth of Thoreau's quote, "The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation." She comes home from her tedious job to a dismal apartment that she shares with her mother and stepfather--both major losers. They take what little money Iris earns and berate her if she spends on herself.While Iris is not unattractive, she presents such a sullen and drab appearance that she is ignored at community dances, until she buys a new red dress when she finally attracts the attention of a man. But don't plan on a happy ending to that one. Years of suppressed resentment can provoke dramatic acts of revenge.At a little over an hour this movie could have played as an episode on "Alfred Hitchcock Presents." Except it has better production values and acting that most shows on that program. I thought the humorous twist in the final scene was particularly in the style of Hitchcock.I enjoyed the establishing shots in the match factory. I have never given much thought about the process of creating match sticks and found the presentation of that interesting. So much complexity and machinery involved in producing such a simple product.

Iiris is not considered a beautiful girl (although I personally would protest against such a judgment), so whenever she goes to dance, she is the only one left alone by the dancers. She has to pay for her drink at the bar. At home, there is her mother and the mother's boyfriend, sitting around the whole day in cross-training-clothes (a very strange parallel between Finnish and Hungarian people), smoking, drinking vodka, watching television or what is going on outside the window. (Quite a situation which we see so often in Béla Tarr's early movies.) Iiris works in a match factory and supports both her mother and the mother's boyfriend with the money she makes. Moreover, in the evening, she washes and irons the clothes. When one day she buys her a new sexy dress, the mother's man calls her a whore and tells her to bring the cloth back so that he has more to live from it during this month. Already at this point, the most patient watcher would whack out, but Iiris carries her grief with herself alone. However, one evening, she meets a man in her bar, they dance, they drink, they go to his expensive looking apartment. When she awakes in the morning, she finds a money bill on her nightstand. When she knocks at his door a few days later, he refuses to let her in. When she finds out that she got pregnant, a few weeks later, she gets a one-sentence notice by typewriter from him saying: "Get rid of it" - together with a check destined to an abortionist.But thanks to the non-existing god in this world of the Helsinki suburbs, Iiris is not Brecht's "Heilige Johanna Der Schlachthöfe". She enters a pharmacy and buys a good-sized package of rat poison. She chooses a nice little bottle, where she fills the lethal mixture of dissolved rat poison and goes first to the bar. Like an inverted female Jesus Christ at the Last Supper, she pours with an angel-like face a good slug of poison in the innocent-looking man's whiskey glass. And so, she goes on, from station to station, not like Federspiel's "Tiffoid Mary" an essentially unknowing killer-medium, but wholly determined Kaurismäki's "Rat Posion Iiris", a sweet-looking female death on her Danse Macabre.