La Vie de Bohème

Aki Kaurismäki's La Vie de Bohème (1992) transplanted the Finnish director's deadpan sensibility to Paris, adapting Henri Murger's nineteenth-century stories — the same source behind Puccini's La Bohème — into a timeless black-and-white comedy of artistic poverty. It competed at the Berlinale and is among the most beloved of his films.

Matti Pellonpää, André Wilms and Kari Väänänen play the trio of hopeless bohemians — a painter, a writer and a composer — whose grand artistic pretensions are matched only by their empty pockets. Kaurismäki shoots a Paris stripped of period markers, a city that could be the 1840s or the 1990s, and lets his characters' shabby dignity and laconic friendship carry the film. His signature blend of melancholy, dry wit and sudden tenderness suits Murger's bittersweet material perfectly, and the great Pellonpää gives the film its soulful centre.

Critics adored its charm and its faithfulness, beneath the deadpan, to the romance of the artistic life. Funny, poignant and quietly devastating, La Vie de Bohème finds in three failing artists a tribute to friendship and stubborn idealism. It is Kaurismäki at his most affectionate — proof that his minimalist style could honour a classic of French literature while remaining entirely his own. Matti Pellonpää gives the film its soulful centre, and the picture stands as Kaurismäki at his most affectionate — proof that his minimalist style could honour a classic of French literature while remaining entirely his own.