If this offering from Aku Louhimies is anything to go buy, Finnish cinema isn’t proposing to offer anything different from the dour, downbeat vision of Kaurismaki. Still, Frozen City works really well in its hand-held-DV realist style. The quotes from Taxi Driver are a bit of a distraction and are fortunately soon abandoned, and the film concentrates on its subject matter, the disintegration of taxi driver Velli-Matti’s life, loss of job, loss of/estrangement from wife and family, spiralling down into an increasingly drunken haze. But I’m old-fashioned: I don’t like the flat DV look – in the past this kind of film could have been shot on 16mm and blown up to 35mm and would have had so much more texture.
by Ian Johnston | Source: 35mm print
10 Dec 2006 9:51 AM | Submit Comment
