A film noir with the oddball, deadpan lyricism of a Finnish tango, Lights in the Dusk joins Drifting Clouds and The Man Without a Past to complete Aki Kaurismäki's “loser trilogy.” Of the three movies' variously hapless protagonists, Koistinen (Janne Hyytiäinen) is perhaps the losingest: night watchman at a Helsinki mall, treated with inexplicable contempt by nearly everyone he encounters, he makes a prime sap for a blonde femme fatale (Maria Järvenhelmi), moll of a criminal gang. Betrayed, Koistinen remains as faithful and abject as the yellow street dog who balefully looks on. Timo Salminen's exquisite cinematography paints the mean streets of Helsinki as a lushly colored Edward Hopper night world where the characters enact stylized gestures of alienation, choreographed to the strains of Gardel and Puccini. In the noir tradition, Kaurismäki tempers his cynicism with sentiment, the figure of a lonesome hot-dog vendor offering the possibility of human mercy.