Kaurismäki's goal in La Vie de bohème is to wrest Henri Murger's 1851 novel from the clutches of Puccini's opera and its bourgeois preconceptions and create a film that is mockingly true to the spirit of the novel-a film about survival, economic and artistic. It is set and shot in contemporary Paris (on locations seemingly unchanged since the time of the novel), with a soundtrack combining Tchaikovsky with punk rock and blues, and a similar linguistic mélange. Anyone who knows Kaurismäki's work knows the depths to which the story's three passionate male artists will go as they fight off landlords, immigration officials, and assorted Philistines and pursue their respective muses and tragic romances. In this La Bohème the girlfriends actually work for a living, but, as critic Amy Taubin notes, sadly, Kaurismäki still does not answer the question, “Why did Mimi have to die?”