LE HAVRE - THE FILM

A couple of evenings ago, I watched the lovely, gentle, humorous, yet suspenseful movie, Le Havre. The film is in French with subtitles, which is off-putting to some, but deliver me from dubbed.  I have no problem with subtitles, and I use them sometimes for films with English actors, because I have hearing loss, and I don't always catch all the words.  I understood some of the French, but the English subtitles were there when I needed them.

The movie is beautifully done in every way.  The writer-director, Aki Kaurismäki, is Finnish, and it seems to me that European movie-makers have less fear of moments of silence than their counterparts in the US.  The actors, all of them, are very good, especially André Wilms as Marcel Marx and Blondin Miguel as Idrissa, the young stowaway from Africa.  There's a sweetness that does not cloy about the film in the way the people in the shabby neighborhood care for each other in troubled times, a virtue which we seem to be in danger of losing, at least here in the US, and a tenderness toward the young African boy.  Though it's a quiet movie, I was entranced every moment as I watched.  Kati Outinen as Arletty, Marcel's wife, was excellent, too.  Laika, Marcel's dog in the film, plays herself.  Lovely.

Certain of the critics, most of them in fact, call the movie a comedy, but I would not go so far, although humor and irony abound.  Watch for the benefit performance by the aging rocker.  Though the director is Finnish, the movie seemed very French to me.  I like what Rob Thomas, of the Capital Times (Madison, WI) says of the film:

It is rare and welcome to watch a movie that automatically assumes people will do the right thing at the slightest provocation.