Made in France with a largely French cast, Aki Kaurismaki’s film has most of the deadpan humour of his resolutely Finnish mini-epics and a determination to pay at least some kind of homage to Marcel Carné, René Clair and other French film-makers he admires. Old-fashioned it may seem, but that’s to its advantage as Marcel, André Wilms’s elderly shoeshine man, who ekes out a living in Le Havre, meets and protects from the police a young illegal immigrant from Gabon (Blondin Miguel).
Not entirely surprisingly, Marcel’s wife is called Arletty and his surname is Marx — signals that mark Kaurismaki’s purposes. But the film doesn’t shout. It just progresses from one plot-point to another with his totally original and often endearing lack of superficial subtlety.
The result is both charming and purposeful. And if you want some real French actors apart from Wilms, there’s Jean-Pierre Darroussin as a nicer cop than he looks, and the great Little Bob, Le Havre’s answer to Paris’s Johnny Hallyday and America’s Elvis. Jean-Pierre Léaud and Pierre Etaix appear in brief cameos.
