Kaurismaki's love affair with road movies and rock 'n' roll continues apace. Finland in the mid 60's is the setting for an almost accidental road movie. Coffee addict Valto locks his mother in a cupboard and sets off with mechanic buddy Reino in his station wagon. They stop at a café and pick up two young Soviet women – Tatjana and Klavdia - who are hitching to the port of Tallinn. They check into a motel but nothing happens between the two couples. At the port Reino decides to stay with Tatjana but Valto returns home to release his mother.

With awkward and ponderous lead characters staring into space, miscommunication between the sexes, a relentless soundtrack of ersatz 60's Finnish American rock, regulars Matti Pellonpaa as Reino and Kati Outinen as the heroines, you have in Tatjana all the elements of a classic Kaurismäki.

Set in the early 1960s, this road movie is a brilliant study of sexual and cultural unease expressed almost exclusively in pregnant pauses and meaningful gestures, as a pair of morose music-loving Finns give a couple of Russian women a lift, against a soundtrack of suitably miserable rhythm-and-blues music. Kaurismäki regulars Kati Outinen and the late Matti Pellonpaa give what amount to masterclasses in comic understatement. Short, sharp and hilarious.

UK DVD

P i d ä  h u i v i s t a  k i i n n i  T a t j a n a
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Murheelliset suomalaiset Valto ja Reino lähtevät tien päälle etsimään kahvia ja vodkaa, joita ilman heidän elämänsä ei ole elämisen arvoista. Mutta heidän haaveensa keskeytyy kun paikalle saapuvat suulaat naiset venäläinen Klaudia ja eestiläinen Tatjana – jotka ovat selvästi kiinnostuneita miehistä kielimuurista riippumatta. Mitkä ovat mahdollisuudet saada kontaktia miehiin jotka mielummin tuijottavat vodkapulloa kun puhuvat?