SUBJECTS

Dysfunctional families -- Finland -- Drama, Revenge -- Drama, Working class women -- Finland -- Drama

The Match Factory Girl

(Tulitikkutehtaan tyttö)

featuring

Kati Outinen, Elina Salo, Esko Nikkari, Vesa Vierikko,

Allegedly intended as a work “that will make Robert Bresson seem like a director of epic action pictures,” Kaurismäki’s early masterpiece and blackest of comedies stars Kati Outinen as Iris, a factory worker whose lonely existence is punctuated by glimmers of hope—a pink party dress, the attention of a man at a bar, a pregnancy—that all result in humiliation and heartbreak. As gripping as it is grim, almost without dialogue, the film depicts Iris’s suffering and the meticulous revenge she enacts on those who are its cause. “Few films are ever this unremittingly unyielding,” Roger Ebert wrote. “I found myself as tightly gripped as with a good thriller.”

Kate MacKay
FILM DETAILS 
Screenwriter
  • Aki Kaurismäki
Cinematographer
  • Timo Salminen
Language
  • Finnish
  • with English subtitles
Print Info
  • Color
  • 35mm
  • 69 mins
Source
  • Janus Films
CINEFILES

CineFiles is an online database of BAMPFA's extensive collection of documentation covering world cinema, past and present.

View Tulitikkutehtaan tyttö (The match factory girl) documents  

Tulitikkutehtaan tyttö (program note), Internationale Filmfestspiele Berlin, 2010

The match factory girl (program note), Film Society of Lincoln Center, 2002

Heartbreak, pop. 1 (review), L.A. Weekly, Steve Erickson, 1993

The match factory girl (review), Film Journal International, Liza Béar, 1992

Theoretical girls (review), Village Voice, J. Hoberman, 1992

Finnish lines (interview), Village Voice, Amy Taubin, 1992

The match factory girl (program note), Palm Springs International Film Festival, 1991

The match factory girl (program note), San Francisco International Film Festival, 1991

Neue filme von Aki Kaurismäki (program note), Internationale Filmfestspiele Berlin, 1990

Tulitikkutehtaan tytto (review), Variety, Keith Keller, 1990

Displaying 10 of 15 publicly available documents.


View all Tulitikkutehtaan tyttö (The match factory girl) documentation on CineFiles.

Preceded By

Those Were the Days

Aki Kaurismäki, Finland, 1992

FEATURING
The Leningrad Cowboys
Kirsi Tykkyläinen

FILM DETAILS 
Print Info
  • B&W
  • 35mm
  • 5 mins
source
  • Janus Films