[Kaurismaki] distinctive, austerely hip, deadpan bleak viewpoint is back again in "Drifting Clouds."

In addition to achieving a paradoxical balance of mirth and melancholy, Drifting Clouds is a dark, mostly interior movie with a color scheme as big as all outdoors.

True to his temperament, Kaurismaki has made another funny-sad movie about the tenuousness of life, in all its ambiguity and nonsensical symmetry.

But Kaurismäki's romanticism isn't straightforward. Instead, it is baptized by fire in the cruel circumstances of working class life in Helsinki; and yet, a smile or a shared silence hold as much meaning as any conventional romantic gesture.