Kurjuuden kuningas
2009 · 22m · Finland
Directed by Mikko Myllylahti
Genres: coming-of-age, drama
Tones: contemplative, melancholic, tender
Jakke, a directionless young man, must decide whether to marry the young woman carrying his child or flee the adult responsibilities closing in around him.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
A Finnish kid stares down fatherhood and blinks—predictable coming-of-age stuff, except Myllylahti seems genuinely uninterested in resolving anything, which is either radical restraint or just melancholy masquerading as depth.
Myllylahti situates this within a distinctly Nordic lineage of intimate male ambivalence, where the refusal to dramatize becomes its own formal argument—tender and architecturally precise about paralysis.
There's a single choice here, probably in how the camera holds on Jakke's face during silence rather than cutting away, that transforms a familiar premise into something that actually breathes like a real person's hesitation.
Reviews
Le réalisateur balance entre la tendresse qu'il a pour son personnage et la figure d'anti-héros de ce dernier, ce qui donne une saveur douce-amère particulière au film. Love in Vain se distingue par le traitement poétique de cette situation plutôt commune d'un point de vue scénaristique.