La Vie de Bohème

British audiences have thus far shown stoic indifference to the work of Finnish fashion victim Kaurismäki, and this straight-faced adaptation of Henri Murger's melodramatic novel (1851) is unlikely to quicken their pulses. A polyglot cast (most of them long-haired Finns) enact the depressed lives of failed artists and their consumptive muse Mimi in fractured French, spurred on by names from the director's address-book and a dog named Baudelaire. The one-note joke palls fast, and Kaurismäki's endless quest for emotional truth at the heart of miserabilist clichés winds up in its usual cul-de-sac.