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| Writer/director/producer Aki Kaurismäki |
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| Cinematographer Timo Salminen |
La Vie de Bohème (The Bohemian Life) B France Italy Sweden Finland (103 mi) 1992 d: Aki Kaurismäki
The characters are from Balzac’s novels or from Jacques Demy’s films, tuned up to walk from one film to another. Their nearest are not forgotten, whether they are alive or dead, real or fictitious. This degree of ‘unreality’ and belief in fantasy that is connected to it – these are the finest qualities of silent films. Art and the making of art, these are the main things, impressionistic in the French spirit. —Aki Kaurismäki, Peter von Bagh interview, 2007
Something of an oddity in the director’s output, winner of a Fipresci Award for New Cinema at the Berlin Film Festival, this is a film that resists categorization, not to be confused with the 1945 film by the same name from Marcel L’Herbier, both based on Scènes de la vie de bohème (1851) by Henri Murger, the basis of Puccini’s La Bohème, King Vidor’s 1926 silent film LA BOHÈME starring Lillian Gish and John Gilbert, the 1996 Jonathan Larson musical Rent, and Baz Luhrman’s Moulin Rouge (2001), among others, while also providing an aesthetic template for the recent Wes Anderson film, The French Dispatch (2022), as both are similarly based on published articles, with Murger writing a string of serial installments published in a local newspaper called Le Corsaire-Satan. Not really a novel, more of a collection of loosely related short stories, Murger’s semi-autobiographical accounts are personal vignettes that look at struggling artists living in the Latin Quarter of Paris, popularizing a bohemian lifestyle that began with impoverished Parisian art students who stood up against the conservative bourgeois aesthetic, idealizing art while also expressing a contempt for status and money, romanticized by writers such as Victor Hugo and Honoré de Balzac, similarly explored by George Orwell in his first novel published in 1933, Down and Out in Paris and London, as American writers Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and Gertrude Stein lived in the Latin Quarter in the 1920’s, embracing the diversity of cultural creativity. For Kaurismäki, he took his rag tag team of actors and film crew on the road, first to London to make I HIRED A CONTRACT KILLER (1990), surrounded by a bigger crew than ever before, utilizing foreign actors, throwing iconic rocker Joe Strummer into the mix, before heading to Paris, making a film in French, though the majority of the cast was Finnish, with a setting that most closely resembles René Clair’s UNDER THE ROOFS OF PARIS (1930), romanticizing the rooftop vantage point of the city of Paris, eloquently shot in black and white by Timo Salminen, certainly among his most artfully expressive, elevating this into a shadowy neo-noir aesthetic, with French songs sprinkled into the film, like a historical time capsule, aki kaurismaki - la vie de boheme, where this contemporary setting could be taking place in any era. Also of interest is the use of French actor André Wilms, playing bohemian writer Marcel Marx, not only in this film but reviving that same character (and dog) twenty years later in Kaurismäki’s Le Havre (2011), becoming an extension of the same film, adding an international perspective to this illustrious Finnish filmmaker, expanding the realms of his material, offering a humane depiction of the enveloping refugee crisis in Europe. The seeds of that growth may be seen here in this absurdly playful adaptation featuring a trio of misfit artists, spending so much of their time talking endlessly in bars and café’s and dingy rooms, with no action to speak of, instead infusing the film with a melancholic tone of chivalrous gallantry and valor surrounding a group of lovable losers that Kaurismäki is so fond of embracing. Only the third time in his career that the filmmaker isn’t working with an original script, adapting Dostoyevsky in CRIME AND PUNISHMENT (1983) and Shakespeare in HAMLET GOES BUSINESS (1987), this film introduces a holy trinity of artists, including Marcel as the writer (with his loyal dog Baudelaire who follows him everywhere), Rodolfo the Albanian refugee painter (Matti Pellonpää), and Schaunard the musician (Kari Kyösti Väänänen), becoming a fraternity of penniless artists who survive on their guile and wit, as they lie, cheat, and steal, all in the service of their art, believing, at all times, that they have to create, splurging whatever money they come across, only to end up back where they started, where inevitable conflicts arise over poverty, perpetually out of work, moving from setback to setback, typically drinking their troubles away.
From the beginning of his career, Kaurismäki’s roots have completely identified with bohemian characters, having been kicked out of the army, worked scores of jobs, been poor, left homeless, yet remained devoted to his art, developing his own unique voice, an underground filmmaker making low budget films, so these vividly drawn, idiosyncratic characters are close to his heart, taking extreme pleasure in filming their exploits, though this version is more sardonic than most. For every Picasso or Baudelaire who rises to fame and glory, there are countless other artists who have faded into obscurity, with Kaurismäki taking a distinct interest in the latter. At the film’s outset, Marcel is being unceremoniously evicted from his room, as his work is in so little demand that he can’t afford to pay rent, refusing to alter a single line in his 21-act play, offended by a publisher’s request, quickly making the acquaintance of fellow artist Rodolfo, Bohemian writer and painter meet over a two-headed trout, La Vie De Boheme, Kaurismaki YouTube (2:45), both sharing a disdain for material wealth, only to discover afterwards that Schaunard has moved into his former apartment. This motley crew of outcasts maintains their friendship throughout the film, sharing money and drink, where camaraderie in the face of hardship is the overriding theme, each with their own questionable talent and stifled dreams, always in pursuit of great art, yet no longer young, like aging innocents entering middle age, typically communicating in a colorfully outdated language that feels better served for the 19th century, where embellishment is a fundamental aspect of their honor code, like the swashbuckling heroes in the Dumas novel The Three Musketeers, using language to elevate the dreary conditions surrounding them, uttering nonsensical phrases like “We’ll be back tomorrow like arrows shot with a sure hand.” Who better to express this flowery language than New Wave icon Jean-Pierre Léaud, who also starred in I HIRED A CONTRACT KILLER (1990), using pseudo intellectualism as a way of impressing girls and drawing attention to himself, as evidenced in Rivette’s Out 1 and Jacques Rivette R.I.P. (1971) and Eustache’s The Mother and the Whore (La Maman et la Putain) (1973). He makes a comical appearance as Blancheron, a wealthy patron of the arts, passing himself off as an aristocrat, heavily frowned upon by these near destitute artists, yet his purchase of Rodolfo’s paintings provides a steady source of income. As a literary adaptation, this features more dialogue than usual, yet neither Pellonpää or Väänänen, part of the director’s trusted stable of actors, spoke a word of French, so phonetic pronunciations were written and taped to the forehead of the actor sitting across from them. Perhaps the best example of the superfluousness of speech is this use of hyperbole, Matti Pellonpää lying to the pawn broker in La Vie de Bohème, Aki Kaurismäki YouTube (1:50), where the poetic use of “It was spring” is perfectly delivered, carrying a weighted and anticipated promise of hope. It wouldn’t be a Kaurismäki film without a loud rock ‘n’ roll intrusion, La vie de bohème (1992 Aki Kaurismäki) YouTube (2:10), with Fake Trashmen ripping off an American classic, a moment of pure ridiculousness, perfectly expressed by Schaunard’s frenzied dancing off to the side in a nihilistic spoof of artistic liberation, a moment he recreates later when he finally plays his new masterpiece on the piano, a radically unorthodox experimentation. A film where exaggeration is the norm, this is a satiric comedy of manners, even mocking Balzac’s legendary coffee consumption, yet it also pays attention to details, taking a strange fascination with a delicate finesse in the most trivial moments, paying tribute to the original author in a scene visiting his gravesite, La Vie de boheme (Kaurismaki), Rodolfo visits Murger's grave YouTube (39 seconds).
Making use of authentic locations in Murger’s novel, what’s interesting is that while it’s an artist’s story, using artists as the main characters, the only Kaurismäki story to do so, it’s not really a film about art, or delving into the nature of art, instead it’s more about people living on the economic fringe, much like all the rest of Kaurismäki’s output, eloquently describing his characters as “honorary artists,” trying to find dignity and human value in whatever they are doing. The director also has a strange fascination with memory and preserving the past, clinging to a world that used to exist before it was wiped out and transformed by modernization and urbanization, preferring the Finland of his youth. In much the same way, this film explores a lost world, recreating a 19th century mindset, with Kaurismäki clearly identifying with a bohemian lifestyle in this or any other era, where the streets may be filled with artists, yet you may also run into someone with a strong desire to collect a debt, avoiding landlords and old lovers on the streets of the Latin Quarter, a neighborhood distinguished by countercultural figures living day to day, communing with the world as it is, taking nothing and no one for granted, often hilarious and preeminently human, with the director mirroring those same aspirations. There are weird bits of humor found throughout this film, like subliminally left hints, slightly altering the storyline to fit the circumstances, where characters are victims of pickpocketing, or even deported to the border, yet each time they bounce back, attempting to regain that zest for life, that joie de vivre. Kaurismäki takes a unique interest in observing small moments, seemingly with no consequence, like finding someone spending time alone smoking a cigarette in silence, watching two lovers kissing in the middle of the street, or finding a comically small three-wheeled car, as if inspired by Jacques Tati, yet always he finds the perfect composition. There are women in this film, as Marcel meets poor provincial girl Musette (Christine Murillo), yet the main focus centers upon Rodolfo’s on, then off, then on again relationship with Mimi (Évelyne Didi, who also appears in Le Havre), winning her back with just a glance, curiously set to Little Willie John’s Leave My Kitten Alone, la vie de boheme YouTube (43 seconds), while special appearances are also made by film directors Samuel Fuller and Louis Malle. The most stunningly beautiful sequence may be a pastoral, Renoir style A DAY IN THE COUNTRY (1946), a carefree afternoon of love in the air, having a picnic on the grass, or a languid boat ride on the lake, wordless reveries set to a Tchaikovsky serenade of strings, Serenade for String Orchestra in C Major, Op. 48, TH. 48 - III ... YouTube (8:15), sharing tender and bittersweet moments that find poetic expression. What this myriad of wayward souls all share, however, is a naïve romanticism, dreamy castoffs from society, exiles who feel out of place wherever they go, their work unappreciated, often disenchanted with the world around them, with Bresson’s Four Nights of a Dreamer (Quatre nuits d'un rêveur) (1971) sharing many of the same sentiments, the city elevated to a central character, where the beauty of Paris is eloquently juxtaposed against a bleaker, harsher reality. None of the artist’s work is embraced, finding it difficult to survive, where one of the saddest moments is discovering they have to sell some of their most prized possessions, with the whirlwind of their life spent trying to collect them, then having to part with what matters most to them for such a pitiful sum. The novel’s romanticism is undercut by the ridiculousness of the characters resorting to a flamboyant self-mockery about their impoverished circumstances, yet the unmistakable sadness of the melodramatic finale is one of the director’s best, finding just the right final shot, leaving a timeless and enduring impression, La vie de bohème (1992 Aki Kaurismäki) YouTube (5:22), where the mournful final song hits an elegiac grace note, Toshitake Shinohara - Yukino Furu Machio YouTube (3:02).
LA VIDA
BOHEMIA (La vie de bohème) - Aki Kaurismäki (1992) entire film with English subtitles (1:42:59)
