The Finnish filmmaker Aki Kaurismäki makes films that contain a certain specificity of strangeness. Kati Outinen, the dour, droopy-eyed actress who has appeared in eight of them, is a similarly unique talent: she radiates a solemn grace which renders even her most painfully introverted characters admirable.

In Kaurismäki's sublime new fable, The Man Without a Past, Outinen plays Irma, a Salvation Army worker who helps a nameless, amnesiac nomad named "M" (Markku Peltola) regain his equilibrium. This she does, first by spooning him soup and later, quite unexpectedly, by falling in love with him. Outinen won Best Actress at the 2002 Cannes Film Festival for the role.

"Irma is looking for courage," the actor explains in an interview at last fall's Toronto International Film Festival. "At first, preparing the role, I thought Irma was an angel, but then I realized that there is no drama in angels. I came to see her instead as someone afraid to express her feelings. She wants to fall in love, and has to work at it."

This description of tentative courtship illustrates the appeal of
Kaurismäki's work, which can seem impenetrable to those uninitiated in its rhythms but has nonetheless won him a passionate international following. The film is a comedy, but nobody is going to mistake it for Anger Management: Kaurismäki's style, which is deadpan verging on the moribund, has made for a movie that echoes the classical Hollywood style of photography -- vibrant colours and vaguely artificial backdrops -- while retaining a gently absurdist atmosphere.

"Aki's sense of humour is a little dry," laughs Outinen knowingly, making a colossal understatement. As in 1998's Drifting Clouds, the dialogue comes in an endless drone of non sequiturs: clipped, dispassionate salvos that accumulate an overwhelming comic force. Kaurismäki's characters don't seem to be talking about their situation so much as avoiding it through over-verbalization.

And yet, in spite of its surreal content and disjointed pacing, The Man Without a Past is a film of old-
fashioned values and sturdy morals. "Aki and I have the same view on life, and also on movies. We love Italian neo-realism, and old Hollywood of the '20s, '30s and '40s. From there he decided to emulate them, to make a fairy tale." Kaurismäki's movie is indeed lyrical, but still tough-minded about the milieu it describes, casting a critical eye at the economic divides that mark Finnish society.

In the opening scenes, M is the victim of a brutal and unprovoked gang assault in a park. Left for dead, he is admitted to a hospital, and, inexplicably, revives from his comatose state. Pushing his broken nose back into place beneath bandages, he wanders away, unsure of his past and scarcely equipped to find a safe future amid the poverty and despair of Helsinki's have-nots.

Saved by a group of squatters who make their homes in abandoned trailers pitched somewhere between the city and the harbour, M regains his health, but not his memory; his continued survival is as tenuous as it is aimless. But then he finds Irma, who, despite her unprepossessing exterior, is every bit as lonely and frightened as he is.

Irma's job requires so much outward kindness that, when she returns home at night, she is too drained to have a life of her own: instead, she sits in her room on her bed, sadly listening to Finnish covers of American pop music.

"When I choose a character," Outinen says, "I choose music for her, too. Irma is withdrawn, but her music shows she might not want to be." Her rock-and-roll self-actualization is slow, but profound: through her time with M, Irma comes to recognize that love can, if not triumph over circumstance, at least render it less harsh. And so, aided in equal measures by chance, kindness and the healing power of rockabilly music -- a regular Kaurismäki fetish -- the pair find the strength to carry on with their lives together.

Off-screen, Outinen says she feels just as secure in her choice of collaborators. "Aki is my soul-mate," she smiles, explaining that their relationship starts with trust and engenders tremendous mutual respect. She applauds him on his choice of subject matter, too: "[he] has made a movie about something important, about dignity."

This gentle humanism that tinges every frame of The Man Without a Past is hardly a standard frame on which to hang stealthily existential comedy, but it proves a sturdy one. Kaurismäki has made a film weighty enough to stick to your ribs even as it plaintively tickles them.

Email us at: LETTERS@EYEWEEKLY.COM or send your questions to EYEWEEKLY.COM
625 Church St, 6th Floor, Toronto M4Y 2G1