Match Factory Girl (Finland, 1990)

There was something I stumbled upon online. It was an article with a list of 20 things you could do to work up the courage to eat alone in a restaurant. It seemed insane, but there were dozens of long comments from people afraid to go into a restaurant alone. They were afraid of being judged. Judged for what, I have no idea. There were a lot of other sites talking about the same thing, also about the horror of seeing a movie alone.

I've always eaten out alone. When I was in high school, I was the only one of my friends with a job and eating out was my only luxury. If anyone ate with me, I'd end up paying for their meals so eating alone had its advantages.

Now, forty years later, I'm beginning to understand why people got mad at me for not eating out with them or not going to movies with them. They thought they couldn't go by themselves.

So. I watched this movie. The Match Factory Girl (1990, Finland) directed by Aki Kaurismaki. I guess if you're a movie director, the life of the working class must seem like living death. Working in a match factory looked okay. It was interesting to see how they were made. Wasn't an exciting job, but it was low stress.

A woman works, comes home, cooks dinner for her mother and step-father. She goes to a dance club that I heard were common in Finland. The Finnish are supposedly very shy. They invented cell phones to avoid face-to-face interaction and dancing with strangers without speaking is their preferred mode of socializing. There's a band playing--drums, guitar, violin, accordion and a singer. It looked rather pleasant to me except that the Match Factory Girl sat on a bench waiting for a man to ask her to dance and got no offers.

Later, she buys a new dress and hangs around in a night club and that's where the story picks up.

There's almost no dialog. It's nice to see a movie that's largely silent but not acted out in pantomime.

Maybe it's because it was nicely photographed, but the Match Factory Girl's life seemed pretty good if she could just cope with a muted social life.

I won't give anything away because the last twenty minutes came as a bit of a surprise to me. She turns into a lonely, below average Walter White in her way.

Available on Filmstruck. It won't be around much longer so act fast.