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Rating: Two solitary, melancholic, sad, and tenacious people fight with composed stubbornness against a cold wind that wants to drag them and make them fly away. And this happens right after their random and miraculous encounter.
Miraculous because Ansa and Olappa have already left their youth behind, and given how they are, with their allergy to unnecessary words, people, and etiquette, they know they won't have many other chances to meet someone. Perhaps none. And so, when they meet by chance behind a glass in an eccentric and unlikely karaoke night... the attraction becomes magnetic.
The cinema in the middle of their love Odyssey is infused with multiple themes: primarily an accusation against the labor market. Miserable in paying you a handful of euros and ready to replace you at the first mistake. She, dirt poor, steals expired goods from the supermarket destined for disposal anyway; he, on the other hand, drinks to endure the hardships of a heavy job to be performed with old and decrepit machinery. He always drinks.
The radio bulletins, placed seemingly at random, underline Finland's hostility to Russia and the war with Ukraine: each time they linger, stating the number of civilian casualties. The glasses emptied with a rhythmic cadence, practically in every scene, underscore the social plague of alcoholism in the Scandinavian countries where for six months the night is almost eternal.
In conclusion, it is a work that satisfied me and is much deeper than it might appear to the distracted eye: as usual, it is reserved for those who appreciate the director's unmistakable style. Monastic scenery, few characters, a thousand nuances (like the countless vintage film posters in bars), and many magnificent silences.
"Leaves in the Wind" is essential and poetic in its extreme coldness and simplicity. It hypnotizes and stuns with terse dialogues, steeped in extreme sarcasm that reaches its peak at the cinema's exit when Olappa shows his beloved the improbable "The Dead Don't Die." A mention to the fundamental soundtrack in knowing how to give the rhythm that the dialogues take away and that, with its lyrics, stitches itself to the plot.
Forgive me for the brutality with which I end it here... The work lasts only 82 minutes and dragging it out too much would, in my opinion, be foolish.
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