Welder M (Peltola) is mugged on his arrival in Helsinki and, when he comes to, has no recollection of the past.

After sitting through this excruciatingly ponderous love story you also pray for a blow to the head to forget you'd ever seen it.

It won four prizes including The Grand Prix at Cannes... but you have to remember it also picked up a gong - The Palm Dog - for best canine performance in the unofficial festival.

Anyway, following his attack, M is taken in by a kindly vagrant community who live in rusting ship containers, rubbish skips and decaying boats.

For the early part of the film he has the look of a geriatric New Romantic until kindly Salvation Army volunteer Irma (Outinen) kits him out with some second-hand clobber.

With the help of a mercenary security guard, he is soon set up in his own container with a reclaimed jukebox that blasts out old rock'n'roll numbers.

The look is as if David Lynch had suddenly blundered ashore in Finland while the script is a stilted parade of dialogue that looks an am-dram company had a bash at it.

Atmosphere owes less to the glittering consumer paradise of Scandinavia than the brusque, fatalist world view of Russia.

Incident is otherworldly - the Sally Army band discovers the blues, M grows potatoes and launches into a tentative romance with Irma.

However, his involvement in a bizarre bank robbery results in the police arresting him and discovering his real identity.

Kaurismaki, who has been (slightly flatteringly) compared with Mike Leigh, is an acquired taste.

It may have the rolling in the aisles at art house cinemas... but the rest of us will be praying for amnesia.

Tim Evans