Lights in the Dusk (2006)

What a major disappointment!  My fourth London Film Festival choice was one of the most miserable, minimalist films I have ever watched.  The Finnish writer-director Aki Kaurismaki has always veered to the downbeat (it must be all those dark Northern nights), but he has hit rock bottom here.  Intended as the third part of a loose trilogy which focussed on unemployment ("Drifting Clouds) and homelessness ("The Man without a Past"), this film was meant to emphasise loneliness.  However where the previous two movies were leavened with humour and a large measure of love and hope, this one only offers the viewer the merest glimmer of a better tomorrow.  It's the sorry tale of an alienated night watchman who is deceived by a femme fatale into unwittingly allowing a major burglary on his watch for which only he receives any punishment.  He spends most of the film being beaten up and generally abused or ignored, and is unable to accept the friendship of an equally lonely, but plain, young woman.  I kept waiting for some kind of sweet revenge or redemption, but alas my wait was in vain.