Product Details

• Actors: Kati Outinen, Elina Salo, Esko Nikkari, Vesa Vierikko, Reijo Taipale
• Directors: Aki Kaurismäki
• Writers: Aki Kaurismäki
• Format: Color, NTSC
• Language: Finnish
• Subtitles: English
• Rating: NR (Not Rated)
• Number of tapes: 1
• Studio: Kino International
• VHS Release Date: June 27, 2000
• Run Time: 70 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• ASIN: 6302944775
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #47,342 in Video (See Bestsellers in Video)

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Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com
The most compact and stylistically impressive of Aki Kaurismäki's perversely minimalist Finnish comedies, The Match Factory Girl stars his blond, blank-faced Garbo, Kati Outinen, as a downtrodden factory worker whose attempts to discover love and companionship are constantly thwarted by her possessive parents and a succession of cloddish, exploitative men. Kaurismäki's deadpan style--the carefully inexpressive acting, motionless camera, and rigidly geometrical compositions--avoids both sentimentality and sarcasm. Although the girl's plight is taken seriously, there is something in the extremity of the situations, and in the lovingly depicted hideousness of her Helsinki home life, that is irresistibly comic. Inspired by the Tiananmen Square uprising, the match factory girl resolves to take a revolutionary stand, arms herself with a packet of rat poison, and sets out for revenge. The video includes an equally hilarious music-video rendition of "Those Were the Days" by Kaurismäki's house band, the Leningrad Cowboys. --Dave Kehr

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars The neo realism italian resurrected in this little gem!, December 12, 2004

By	Hiram Gomez Pardo (Valencia, Venezuela) - See all my reviews (TOP 100 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

The essential clues will be found through a meticulous analysis of the viewer all along the story .
The serious breakdown of the girl can not be seen as an isolated fact . Kaurismaki through his merciless eye-camera will lead to a dead city where the relationships are not cold . Simply they are absent . The emotive liasons are not present in her vocabulary and her loneliness , despair and hopeless will make of her a little monster closed behind a shell created to prevent of any human being .
Her unhappy affair with that nasty boyfriend is the last drop that will surpass the glass before she decides to cross the forbidden line between sanity and insanity .
It is not a simple revenge . It a statement against a not human world deaf , mude and blind .
A must see this minimalist and clever film of Finland .

3 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Brilliant Post -modern Jewel, July 29, 1999

By	Lucio Castro ([e-mail]) (Buenos Aires, Argentina) - See all my reviews

You are going to love this minimalist fable from one of the greatest directors of all time: Aki Kaurismaki. A finnish awesome talent.

1 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Cuidado!, July 20, 2005

By	khense "khense" (Los Angeles, CA) - See all my reviews

Kati Outinen is a deadpan madonna that can take you anywhere. You like her - the poor match factory girl? Cuidado. You may be riding the anchor instead of the boat. A doormat that bites! I'm thinking Sandrine Bonnaire on Quaaludes - or Bette Davis as Helen Keller. After you see this film, for an antidote, watch Kati in "The Man Without a Past."