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Iris works in a match factory. She is young but not pretty. A girl searching for happiness. At home she cooks for her parents, with whom she has no real relationship. All human emotions seem to have frozen into silence and a frigid coldness. When Iris falls in love with a man who simply uses her for his own pleasure she decides to strike back, and not only her parents and lover fall victim to her revenge: She buys a large quantity of rat poison and carries out her plan with cool deliberation. In the end she makes no attempt to resist when she is arrested as she works on the assembly line at the match factory. This is a typical film from Aki Kaurismäki's worker trilogy, which established his special reputation.
Aki Kaurismäki, born 1957 in Finland, initially worked as a postman, washer-upper and film critic and later as scriptwriter and actor before starting to make his own films. His Hamlet Goes Business was one of the biggest discoveries of the 1988 Forum. In the years that followed, he returned again and again to the Forum, showing films such as Ariel (1989), The Match Factory Girl, (1990), I Hired a Contract Killer (1991), La vie bohème (1992) and Juha (1999) there.
Production: Villealfa Filmproductions OY, Swedish Film Institute
Camera: Timo Salminen
Format: 35mm, color
Running Time: 70 min.
Language: Finnish
