LIGHTS IN THE DUSK concludes a series of three films described as The Loser Trilogy. The two preceding films “Drifting Clouds” and “The Man Without a Past” were also screened in the Cannes Film Festival Competition Series. “The Man Without a Past” was a story about life that had to be rebuilt.
LIGHTS IN THE DUSK is also a tale of a shadowy man, or perhaps rather a story where the world has turned shadowy for a man upholding old-fashioned virtues and humanity. In their place stand betrayal and deceit, together with the absurd state of insolent division of income, sharp as a theorem: property is, concealed or openly, theft.
There is no single image that some other director might put his signature on, nor is there no stretch of dialogue someone else could have written. The soundtrack, too, is exceptional, containing in one magnificent touch the voices of the two true tango kings: the Argentinian Carlos Gardel, whom everyone knows, and the Finnish Olavi Virta, known only to a few foreigners but who should be known by everyone. And in the midst of this, a strange man - a new and dreamy apparition in Kaurismäki’s world.