t 81 minutes, Aki Kaurismäki’s was the shortest film in a bloated Cannes competition. It was also among the best, accomplishing more with less (and in less time) than any number of overwrought productions, a notion evidently shared by at least some members of Ruben Östlund’s jury, which awarded the film its namesake third runner-up prize, making this only the second honour Kaurismäki’s received from Cannes after winning the Grand Prix for in 2002. Billed as a belated fourth entry in the 66-year-old Finnish director’s “Proletariat Trilogy,” does re-engage the working-class woe and bittersweet ennui of (1986), (1988), and (1990), but it otherwise operates in just about every conceivable way as any Kaurismäki film before or since. Which should come as no surprise: few modern
