Virtue is its own reward in this wonderfully compact and gentle fable from the Finn who gave us the world's first piano accordion supergroup in the 1989 high-concept spoof Leningrad Cowboys Go America.
Its agreeably stagey and fairy-tale quality makes it an ideal starting point for those unfamiliar with Kaurismaki's tinder-dry deadpan comedy.
It's the second film he's made in French, after 1992's lovely La Vie de Boheme, which it references - the main character Marcel Marx (Wilms), refers to his past life as an indigent playwright in Paris. Now, though, Marcel is a shoeshine man in the port city of the title, touting for business at the railway station.
After a hilarious stand-alone opening sequence which sets the screwball tone, he becomes unwittingly involved in the fortunes of Idrissa (Miguel), a stowaway African refugee, who is being pursued by an unsmiling cop called Monet (Daroussin, from Conversations with my Gardener). What follows is a ruefully comic take on the same material that was treated with barely contained rage in Philippe Lioret's Welcome a couple of years ago.
Marcel and his devoted wife Arletty (Outinen) live in a backstreet neighbourhood and are kept afloat only by the indulgence of the baker and grocer. As the three - with plenty of local assistance - conspire to ensure Idrissa is united with his mother in London, we get to bask in the warmth of their working-class solidarity.
