Critics reviews

Kaurismäki understands that the luxury of open disaffection—or even sadness—is not available to the refugee. It is this feeling of utter powerlessness and silencing, of the abject dehumanization of displaced people today, that haunts us long after the film has ended.

It's the only recent film I know that merits comparison with the work of Charlie Chaplin. Like Chaplin, Kaurismäki blends humor and pathos in his look at a down-and-out individual by using the character's misadventures to illuminate the plight of many others like him. . . . The effect is similar to what Chaplin achieved with The Great Dictator: the movie draws attention to a pressing global issue while functioning as crowd-pleasing entertainment.

Though the 35mm cinematography suits the tactile romanticism of jukeboxes and cigarette smoke, it doesn't create a hermetic universe of pacifying nostalgia; deep colors dissolve into the melancholy chiaroscuro and dull grays of Helsinki. As Kaurismäki peppers the film with performances from his favorite Finnish blues musicians, he externalizes anguish without laying it on thick—time and again, his empathetic minimalism keeps his tonal preferences from calcifying into a rigidity of vision.

The movie expands upon Kaurismäki's central mode of observation and delivers some trenchant, upsetting truths about the immigration experience from the side of those seeking asylum. . . . Kaurismäki makes these bigots look ridiculous, but he also takes very seriously the damage they do, and the movie's finale takes that into account. Its suggestive title lingers at the end, leaving a question mark that the viewer will have to turn over personally, and that's a good thing.

The film has that look, of course, that tells you couldn't be watching a work by anyone else. That distinctive shade of blue makes its appearance in a shot in the restaurant at night when a slash of light from outside dissects the back wall; Kaurismäki, Salminen, and production designer Markkü Pätilä, also a mainstay, have between them created an Scandinavian counterpart to Edward Hopper's night scenes. Every shot . . . has the flat diagrammatic composition that's a Kaurismäki trademark.

The scenes at Wikström's restaurant feature some of the filmmaker's hackiest humor, including an over-extended sequence in which the new owner of the Gold Pint attempts to unsuccessfully reinvent it as a sushi joint. But the poignant portions that focus on Khaled—as he turns himself into the authorities, makes friends at a refugee barracks, and tries to find his lost sister, Miriam (Niroz Haji)—contain some of his purest filmmaking.

The calm and plain style of the director, Aki Kaurismäki, is well suited to the step-by-step observation of the immigration system's oppressively officious approach to Khaled and his fellow-applicants . . . Meanwhile, the ubiquitous presence of violent neo-Nazis tempers the good feelings. Running gags about oddball twists in the restaurant business serve little purpose but don't detract from the movie's essential quasi-documentary power.

Hilarious hijinks ensue (deploying, in classic Kaurismäki style, dogs, stinging one-liners, and rockabilly tunes), but the director's political critique is manifest in every frame. An uproarious setpiece involving the half-baked makeover of Wikström's restaurant into a sushi joint doubles as a send-up of Europe's willingness to fetishistically consume, but not embody, multiculturalism.

If Kaurismäki's latest film does not feel like his freshest and most original, it still stands as one of the very few, if not the best film made on this subject. Without giving any political or historical context, The Other Side of Hope lucidly exposes the absurdity of a humanitarian catastrophe systematically treated in the press and by politiciansas some sort of natural disaster.

If Le Havre worked as a peculiar sort of fairy tale, one which has its roots planted firmly in the contexts of ongoing social conversations on immigration and sovereignty, The Other Side of Hope fulfills the vague sense of its aspirational title as a film limited in scope and led only by the guidance of its maker's skeptical positivity.

The Other Side of Hope proves to be one of the Finnish veteran's most impressive balancing acts, a tragicomedy that feels urgent and yet manages to never lose sight of life's inherent ironies.

The film gets by on the simple pleasures unique to Kaurismäki's oeuvre — it's always something to look at, and the one-liners and sight gags generally land — all the while carrying the worrying suggestion that this cantankerous joker is softening into something like the Bono of droll art cinema