The Bohemian Life

This deadpan tragicomedy about a group of impoverished, outcast artists living the bohemian life in Paris is among the most beguiling films by Finnish director Aki Kaurismäki. Based on stories from Henri Murger’s influential mid-nineteenth-century book "Scènes de la vie de bohème" (the basis for the opera La bohème), the film features a marvelous trio of Kaurismäki regulars - André Wilms, Matti Pellonpää, and Kari Väänänen - as a writer, painter, and composer who scrape by together, sharing in life’s daily absurdities. Gorgeously shot in black and white, La vie de bohème is a vibrantly scrappy rendition of a beloved tale. (Criterion)