La Vie de Bohème (1992)

Just perfect...

A great movie, one of the best of this year. There was a bit of confusion at one point in the plot, but nothing serious.

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

It's simply great fun, a winsome film and an occasionally over-the-top luxury fantasy that never flags.

Finnish director Aki Kaurismaki's black and white adaptation of Scene de la Vie de Boheme (originally a non fiction book by Henri de Murger dealing with the lives of the starving bohemian artists of the Paris of the first decades of the 19th century, and later a famous opera by Puccini) is surprisingly faithful to its source material, despite its modern settings. The place is still Paris, and the film closely follows both the book and the opera, with the proud but poor artists living at the day to day to survive in the city of lights. We even have the famous burning of the manuscripts to get some heat during the cold winter. The late Matti Pellonpaa, a Kaurismaki regular, stars as Rodolfo, as well as other less known, but equally fine actors (the actress playing Mimi, however, fails to create an impression). There are a couple of cameos by Nouvelle Vague faves Jean-Pierre Leaud and Samuel Fuller. Note: Later, Rent, a less accomplished modern retelling of La Vie de Boheme, this time set on New York City, was also produced, first on stage, and later on film.

Aki Kaurismaki is one of the most important modern directors. He manages to make a movie out of nothing just like, say, Mike Leigh. And his characters are simply every-day people, whom he manages to transform into convincible movie heroes or, most likely, antiheroes.This movie is not different: it is very sad and also joyous at the same time. It treats a very serious subjects (pourness, loneliness, desperation) without being pathetic or overblown and it makes, in the most beautiful way, a strong connection between the characters and the viewer.Marvellous acting and genious direction makes this movie another Kaurismaki's little/big masterpiece.

I wondered why I was actually laughing at a French film until I realized it was made by Finns. Reminded me a lot of Buster Keaton, except that the pratfalls are mostly cerebral. Deadpan comedy with style. The black dog was the Finnish Rin-Tin-Tin. I hope he got a nice bone for his efforts.

A French playwright, an Albanian painter, and an Irish composer, all living hand-to-mouth in Paris, devise various schemes to secure their next meal, or cheat the landlord, or help each other out of jams. Cynically witty and poignant by turns, La Vie de Boheme somehow manages to simultaneously embellish and skewer the old cliche about starving artists on the Left Bank. This might almost be the film to show your son or daughter when they have declared that they want to become a novelist or painter and move to an exotic locale--except that, who knows, it might have the opposite of the intended effect.I liked it quite a bit. Watch for the performance by the Irishman of his own piano piece for his friends, toward the end: hilarious!