Jussi Vatanen: Aki Kaurismäki and me
In the poetic Dead Leaves, which arrives today on VOD, DVD and blu-ray, the Finnish actor plays an alcoholic worker who falls in love with a supermarket cashier. He tells us about his experience with the filmmaker he has always admired.
This interview was originally published on September 20, 2023, at the time of the release of Dead leavesofAki Kaurismäki, At the movie theater. We are sharing it again to celebrate the arrival of the film in our living rooms.
How did you find yourself playing this alcoholic worker struck by love at first sight in Dead Leaves?
Jussi Vatanen: It all started with a phone call… that even in my wildest dreams, I would never have imagined! On the other end of the phone, Aki asks me to meet him to talk about his next film. I grew up admiring his cinema so I obviously went to this meeting. We had lunch together. He explained to me the idea for a film that he had in mind without having written it and asked me if I was interested in being part of it. You can guess my answer, right?
When did you discover the script?
Two years later ! And I devoured this scenario in one sitting. You’ve seen the film, so I don’t need to tell you about its beauty and poetry. But what struck me while reading it was its precision. Aki uses the language with incredible mastery. As an actor, page after page, there is not a word or comma to change. Your character, the situations. Everything is as concise as it is clear. He is a man of few words, but what words! And that constitutes an invaluable basis for work. I had no questions to ask him. Everything was written!
So you don’t need to go through rehearsals to prepare?
No, with Aki, the exchanges happen… during lunches. It’s in these moments that we talk about the film, the character. It was he who did not want to do rehearsals because he did not want my partner Alma Pöysti and I to cross paths before our first scene together to keep spontaneity intact. My preparatory work therefore consisted simply of knowing my text by heart in order to get carried away.
And how does Aki Kaurismäki behave on set?
Like his script, he is a man of few words. But always open to exchange. And I was impressed by the depth and precision of his explanations when you asked him for them. In fact, every day I had the impression of seeing a painter at work in front of me and it is no coincidence that each scene in his films resembles a painting.
Alma Pöysti, by Aki Kaurismäki in Finnish Love
Does he do a lot of takes?
Very little. From the outset, he even explained to us that a priori, he would only do one take per scene. Two if we were really bad! (laughs) It strengthens your attention and your concentration as an actor. And this idea embraces what our characters experience, the way in which the unexpected arises in their solitary lives.
When you shoot with a filmmaker you’ve admired for so many years, how do you feel on the first day of filming? Are we experiencing any particular anxiety?
I’m not going to lie to you, I was very stressed. For fear of not being up to the role, the film, the director and indeed the admiration I have for him. The only cure for this? The weather. The days of filming that come one after the other and free your mind from things that have nothing to do with the film and what we have to play. I was lucky here that it happened quite quickly.
Dead leaves, the beautiful melodrama of Aki Kaurismäki (review)
