Watching Taisto, our proletarian hero, trying to make it through one more day brings to mind Buster Keaton-driving a convertible Cadillac in the snowy air, unable to get the top up; pulling said Caddy out of a garage that, incidentally, collapses behind him like the life he is leaving. Like much of Kaurismäki's work, this is a beautifully wrought, dark little film about a life of struggle, but here both life and film are obliquely illuminated by love. Taisto hits the road in the above-mentioned fashion when the Lapland mine he works at shuts down. Employment eludes him, thugs pursue him, but his luck shifts-almost imperceptibly but profoundly-when he meets Irmeli, a meter maid, and her lovelorn little boy. In Kaurismäki's brand of minimalism, there is no point, and no way, to aggrandize these lives, so he offers instead a pedal-almost-to-the-metal road movie-a progression of scenes, each with its own integrity, each with a measurable intensity.