It's difficult to imagine the master of potent irony and trim narrative turning out films any more acerbic or lean, but The Match Factory Girl is crafted with just such pristine logic. This final chapter in Kaurismäki's “proletarian trilogy” (including Shadows in Paradise and Ariel) depicts the life of Iris, a young woman who spends her days at a mind-numbing job and silent nights with her dysfunctional family. Picked up at a dance, Iris begins to fantasize a life with Prince Charming. When she discovers the world is even crueler and colder than she had ever imagined, Iris plots her revenge with steely conviction. Intended as a work “that will make Robert Bresson seem like a director of epic action pictures” (A. K.), this film gives deadpan new resonance. A feminist film if there ever was one, The Match Factory Girl is a masterpiece of precise mise-en-scène.