One of Kaurismäki’s most acclaimed but least seen works, Drifting Clouds is an intimate portrait of a couple facing the emotionally enervating consequences of economic dislocation. As the film opens, Ilona works as a restaurant hostess, while Lauri is a motorman on the city’s tram system. They live in a modest highrise apartment and are about to purchase a television on credit. What ensues is a series of humiliating experiences and defeats that reveal the precariousness of their lives as the couple scrapes the bottom of the barrel to survive. As Piers Handling writes, "what ultimately transpires, a minor epiphany in both their lives, shows Kaurismäki to be a master of the understated hopes and dreams of the working class."