Kaurismaki creates some beautiful frames, carefully composing his affectless characters against the rooms' colors, but there's something wrong with your story when people are upstaged by the decor.

It's a deceptively satisfying, almost magical achievement, like being stranded in a desert yet never going thirsty.

Kaurismäki's spare style and economical storytelling are well-suited to this particular story about loneliness, as the director never muddies the frame with sentimental dross or lugubrious inclinations.

Though it's the weakest of the three panels that form Kaurismaki's trilogy, which began with Drifting Clouds in 1996, it's still worth seeing.