In Mika's short feature reminiscent of the breathless poignancy of the French New Wave, actor Aki invents the character he would later perfect in The Worthless: the edgy, Jean-Pierre Léaud-like young philosophe. By The Worthless, this type who keeps his phone in the fridge and his head in a book has become a certified (if comical) paranoiac, the fate, perhaps, of the marginal sage as he ages from rebellion to despair. But in The Liar he is still a callow youth, bounding through the parks and streets of Helsinki, pursuing the girl of his dreams and his creditors alike with wistful, clever lies. A lapsed student whose ambition is to become Finland's greatest working-class writer-and then refuse to publish anything he has written-his "problem," as one observer puts it, is that he can't separate ideas from actions. This, of course, is the stuff great filmmakers are made of; The Liar's hero, named Ville Alfa, and a long quote from Band of Outsiders confirm the tribute to Godard and his compatriots in this lovely piece of fausse nouvelle vague.