Based on the Henri Murger novel that Puccini adapted for his celebrated opera, La Vie de Bohème is an inspired update of the original that shifts the narrative into contemporary times and the stock company of Kaurismäki characters to Parisian locales. These new bohemians include a French poet named Marcel, an Albanian painter, and an Irish composer—men who are as luckless in life as they are in love. By turns hilarious and tragic, La Vie de Bohème is a deeply funny and emotionally potent work that blends the formality of the nineteenth-century French text with Kaurismäki’s compassion for his band of outsiders. Look for cameo appearances by such notable Parisian film figures as Jean-Pierre Léaud, Sam Fuller, and Louis Malle.