Tag: Austrian

Styx

Posted on by victorfraga

Rikke (Susanne Wolf) is a doctor in Germany. She’s used to saving lives. She rescues a seemingly lifeless passenger from a wrecked car. She’s efficient, stern and doting. She’s also reasonably wealthy. She owns a sailboat called Asa Gray. Rikke epitomises the European ideal of professional and personal fulfilment. One day she sets off from Gibraltar on a very personal mission: to reach the remote Ascension Island in the Southern Atlantic Ocean entirely on her own. Attentive macaques on The Rock observe Rikke as she prepares to take off.

Rikke is as efficient a sailor as a doctor. She knows how to batten down the hatches and to face a storm without losing her calm. She communicates eloquently with the coast guards, and seems to be in full command of her journey. Styx starts off as a tale of human resilience and female endurance, a little bit like Baltasar Kormakur’s dirty gem Adrift (2018). It then sails into a completely different territory, into very stormy political waters.

A wrecked boat is seen at the distance. Rikke attempts to make contact, but they do not respond. She approaches the vessel and realises that it’s a wrecked refugee boat about to sink. Black people are screaming desperately. Her presence make many jump off the boat. Their desperation is harrowing. The images – despite being fictional – bring tears to my eyes as I recall them and write this paragraph. Rikka is advised by the coast guard that she should not intervene, in name of her very own security.

Despite the firm orders, she takes a boy on board. He’s hipothermic and covered in bruises, and virtually unconscious. She puts him on a drip and gives him further treatment, not too different to what she does at work back in Europe. She informs the coast guard that she took a refugee on board. He orders her to depart, promising that support is on its way, but Rikke does not believe him.

Countless moral questions are instantly raised. Be prepared to do a lot of soul-searching. Should Rikke heed the coast guard and depart in the name of protocol and her own security? Did she make a mistake by rescuing one single person and allowing others to perish? Should her Hippocratic Oath prevail? Is the coast guard just doing his job (the typical Nuremberg defence), or is he too responsible for the lives of these people? Should she return and save more lives? Is the life of a refugee worth less than the life on an European? The care provided to an European in the beginning of the film contrasted to the refugees left to perish on their own suggest that the answer is resounding “yes”: European lives matter more than refugee lives. Even the macaques seem to have it easier than the dark-skinned refugees.

Styx is very lean and bleak film, in very good Austrian style, not too different from directors like Michael Haneke and Ulrich Seidl. The narrative is austere, with very little music and technical wizardry. The excellence of the movie lies in its realistic content instead, and the urgent questions raised. These are moral questions to which no one in Europe and the world is exempt. This is a film about humanity and altruism. My only reservation about Styx is the closure, which is a little bit clumsy and disjointed.

Styx is out in cinemas across the UK from Friday, April 26th.

L’Animale

Posted on by victorfraga

High school student, Mati (Sophie Stockinger) is about to graduate and leave the rural countryside for the university of Vienna. From the very beginning, we are introduced to Mati’s world, which includes her close and only group of friends – a ‘gang’ of three male students. Mati is a fundamental and vital part of the group – she’s the best one at riding the motorcycle. We see her constantly hanging out with them – either at the local bar or at the motocross sandlot – often causing trouble or even bullying/attacking her female classmates.

We come across a number of people. Each character represses their sexuality and their feelings in a different way. It’s not only Mati, who seems to haven’t yet come to terms with her sexuality – she gradually realises her feelings for her classmate Carla (Julia Franz Richter). Mati’s father hasn’t yet come out, either, despite the many extramarital dalliances with men. Mati’s mother finds out about her husband’s secret and makes the decision to turn a blind eye instead. She chooses to repress her feelings instead of dealing with the unhappy marriage.

Katharina Mückstein’s second feature film is very topical. It addresses many contemporary issues, such as sexual diversity, gender identity, violence and bullying.

The feeling of belonging and inclusion is even stronger and more necessary when living in a small community. For Mati – to be part of the gang means that she has to behave in a certain way, which includes often verbally attacking her female classmates or making a mess in the supermarket where Carla works. However – unlike her parents opt to forge a middle-class normality normality – Mati makes a very brave decision.

The film ends with some of the main characters singing the titular Italian song L’Animale. This final sequence is a reflection of the emotional struggles and dilemmas the protagonists face. The contrast between Mati and her family crystal-clear, and an upbeat note leaves audiences feeling positive about our future!

L’Animale is available to view online during the entire month of December with ArteKino. Just click here for more information.

Homesick

Posted on by victorfraga

Jessica Klug (Esther Maria Pietsch) is a young and obstinate cello student preparing for a major performance. She moves into a new flat with her devoted boyfriend Lorenz Amman (Matthias Lier). She needs peace, quiet and privacy in order to rehearse for what feels like a watershed event in her life. But her nosy neighbour Hilde Domweber (Tatja Seibt, pictured just below) keeps making unexpected appearances, and very strange things suddenly begin to happen.

Homesick is a very well-crafted psychological terror movie. The young Austrian director Jakob M Erwa’s borrowed elements from his countryman Michael Haneke and the French-Polish master of suspense Roman Polanski. The ambiguous gaslighting of Rosemary’s Baby (Polasnki, 1968) prevails throughout the movie. Are Jessica’s neighbours and perhaps even her partner up to something truly evil, or is she just paranoid? The idea of the tormented music artist echoes The Piano Teacher (Haneke, 2001), while the fear of being observed may remind of Hidden (Haneke, 2005). Well, being in the land of Josef Frietzl and Natascha Kampusch, you’d be forgiven for being suspicious of what your neighbours get up to behind closed doors.

The fact that most of the action takes place inside the flat makes the experience particularly claustrophobic. The tension builds up slowly with a number of subtle elements. Jessica has a weird black pet cat that’s mostly unresponsive, there’s an unnerving doorbell mysteriously going off, a whistling kettle and strange noises in the house which strangely blend with the cello riffs as Jessica rehearses with her headphones on. But then things begin to escalate, and there is some violence and a death or two . Plus someone sends undertakers to collect Jessica’s body when in fact she’s still alive. Who could possibly pull such a bad taste prank?

The camera is mostly static and the settings are dark and bleak. A recurring image of the elderly Hilde on her window looking into Jessica’s flat is particularly creepy. You will feel trapped, scrutinised and even manipulated, just like Jessica, who predictably begins to have a mental breakdown. Pietsch is outstanding in conveying a sense of paranoia and vulnerability. And Seibt is marvellous as the creepy and overly attentive neighbour. Oh, and stay tuned for a dirtylicious at the end of the film!

This is a very convincing endeavour for a filmmaker just 33 years of age (at the time the film was made). Since, Erwa has directed the LGBT romance Centre of my World (2017), but I think he’s far more effective with a creepy and disturbing script to hand.

Homesick is out on DVD on February 12th.

8:30

Posted on by victorfraga

If you’ve hit a certain age, you may remember Edward Norton’s character in Fight Club (David Fincher, 1999) justifying a life of insomnia: “Everything is a copy of a copy of a copy”. Strictly speaking, Laura Nasmyth’s 8:30 isn’t about insomnia, but it does seem to come from that same state of mind. It’s as if the sleep disorder materialised right in front your very eyes.

This Austrian film follows the misadventures of a young sales agent (Florian Nolden) that travels to some unnamed suburban place and becomes trapped, in a surreal fashion, since the train he takes keeps bringing him back to the same godforsaken station. Madness ensues.

The funny thing (of which there are plenty) is that the sense of being trapped is established from the very beginning, way before we realise the protagonist’s fate. The framing that leaves the characters uncomfortable amidst the locations’ stern architecture belies their inadequacy, having to walk in these spaces not made for them, which looks like a cue straight from Roy Andersson’s playbook and also brings to mind Robin Collyer’s photographic work of street signs with no text.

We see the sales agent go on with his daily duties with three colleagues, with whom he never talks directly, only through wireless phones. They go about not actually managing to sell anything, being miserable in the most matter-of-fact fashion and even do an impromptu tribute to Reservoir Dogs (Quentin Tarantino, 1992). This is the collapse of 21st century youth.

Once we enter the Lynchian part of film, however, other themes surface: like the 70-year-old American filmmaker, the director blurs the line between real and unreal by having their main narrative interspersed with commercials, talking heads interviews and dream sequences, that start to borrow from each other so much that they eventually blend into one being.

For the whole of its running time, the film does not provide much dialogue or even much of a plot, relying on its visuals, that have the look and feel of an art installation, to get its message across. 8:30 is an Austrian production, directed by a Brit, with bits in English, German, Spanish and Italian. In this world of extreme connectivity and a myriad of languages, the helmer proposes that the lack of communication is not due to lack of tools, but a lack of will and focus. In the film, all around the protagonist’s story, content is always been consumed but conversations rarely take place.

Despite its social critique and relatively short duration of just 70 minutes long, the movie does overstays its welcome during its final third. Yet it does manage to create some inspiring surreal moments, specially the one that takes place on a swimming pool (no spoilers there, it’s in the poster). Overall, it seems more suited to museums than to theaters, but that’s hardly a bad quality.

8:30 will show in London as part of the East End Film Festival, which will take place throughout June. It’s a part of the Discovery section.

Tomcat (Kater)

Posted on by victorfraga

Would you have sex with a murderer? What about a cat murderer? The strong and stable relationship of French-horn player Stefan (Lukas Turtur) and orchestra manager Andreas (Philipp Hochmair) suffer a heavy blow after the former willfully and yet unexplainably kills their beloved feline. Stefan begins to experience fits, and Andreas simply isn’t able to be intimate and have sex with his partner anymore.

Moses the cat (in an outstanding performance by Toni, who should be nominated to a ‘Paw-scar’) is an extremely loving and charismatic creature, and he adds the finishing touch to a relationship and lifestyle as close as possible to perfection. Stefan and Andreas are both extremely good-looking, with a very satisfying sex life, good jobs, a very large and comfortable house, great friends, and peace seems to prevail everywhere. They walk around naked at home and most of the time, and they have a green and leafy garden. They look like some modern and bourgeois version of Adam and Eve (or Adam and Steve, for that matter), with a cat replacing the snake. There’s even a tree symbolic of sin and punishment, and where one of the film’s most significant events takes place.

The two lovebirds share their intimacy with Moses, who also becomes some sort of partner. He witnesses everything, but he’s never intrusive. Is it immoral to allow an animal to watch you have sex? Of course it’s not: animals don’t share Christians values of sin and morality. In facts, cats are elegant, nimble and attractive animals. So it’s entirely acceptable and normal that they witness our intimate moments, if they wish to do so. So I don’t think Stefan killed Moses because he was jealous of put off by his presence. Moses was never a killjoy, or a libido kill. Stefan never verbalises his motive, probably because he doesn’t know it himself.

After Moses is killed everything changes. The perfectly happy lifestyle quickly descends into hell. Guilt and mourning turn sex into a burdensome and undesired task. Resentment and mistrust hover above their gorgeous dwelling. Stefan’s and Andrea’s nudity is no longer sexy and empowering. Instead now they look vulnerable and frail. It’s almost as if they were having a hangover from an extended and heady honeymoon (not coincidentally, the film title in German “Kater” means both “tomcat” and “hangover”).

This is not the first Germanic film to expose the impact of a willful feline murder on a relationship. Rainer Werner Fassbinder has a very sadistic Helmut killing his lover’s in the 1974 classic Martha. The difference is that Helmut never regretted his actions, and Fassbinder opted not to show the actual murder scene. But the impact was equally devastating.

The major problem with this Austrian film is that it is a little too long, at almost two hours. The catty fights get a little petty towards the end. Those who’ve never had an animal may find it a little difficult to relate to such unrelenting drama

Kater won the Teddy Prize for LGBT cinema at the 66th Berlin Film Festival last year. It showed in UK cinemas in May and is showing at the Fringe! Queer Film Fest in November.