The Match Factory Girl

A darkly humorous fable, THE MATCH FACTORY GIRL chronicles, in extreme minimalist fashion, the transformation of an ugly duckling into a killer tigress. Utilizing perhaps only a half-dozen lines of dialogue, Finnish filmmaker Aki Kaurismaki relies instead on the lyrics of about a dozen songs to comment on the action. Like some industrial documentary, the film opens with close-ups of the machinery used in making wooden matches, from the skinning of a section of tree trunk to the packaging and labeling of the bundles. Iris (Kati Outinen) has the deadeningly routine job of making sure the labels are properly stuck to the cartons. Her home life is as dreary as her job,...