Review: MIFF Reviews: Attenberg, Surviving Life, Wasted Youth, Michael
Attenberg
Attenberg is a fresh second feature from Greek filmmaker Athina Rachel Tsangari. The film skirts the discordant path of human love through modernity in contemporary Greece. 24 year-old Marina (Ariane Labed) has never had sex. She lives in a town practically abandoned following severe economic hardship. Her father Spyros, (Vangelis Mourikis) – one of the architects who worked on building the town – is dying of cancer. Here, the meeting of her sexual immaturity with the vapidity of economic progress allows for some thoughtful reflection upon the appalling situation currently happening in Greece. Yet this is not a stereotypical coming-of-age narrative and, most interestingly, its comment on sexuality and virginity exists outside misogynist discourse (I’m thinking of those stereotypical narratives where virginity is either a sign of frigidity or purity).
Marina is not embarrassed by her sexual immaturity. She does not seek out intercourse to perform some clichéd right-of-passage into adulthood. Further, her virginity is not intended as an allegory for the cold, inhuman nature of the economy. Instead it is gradually unwrapped, presented alongside the slow death of her father as a psychological working-through. Marina acts like an uninhibited child, fostering her own sense of desire and thereby distinguishing herself from the blind, uniformed workers who merely repeat the expectation of work and progress around her.
The film is full of childish gesture (there is much mimicking of primate behaviour), unrefined conversation (Marina asks: “Dad, have you ever pictured me naked?”) and awkward sexual experimentation (such as the kissing scene of the opening sequence). This gradual procession is not finalized as either awakening or closure, but as experimentation. While effective it can be a little grating, particularly as it is presents itself as continuous innocence. Yet what are we but unaware when up against the great forces of sex and death? In this way, the film cleverly separates the repetition of work and economy with the disruption of sexuality and death to ask: Where is the human located in this world? – Lauren Bliss
Surviving Life — dir. Jan Svankmajer
The newest installation from Czech surrealist, Jan Svankmajer, presents the story of a married, middle-aged man troubled by repeating sexual dreams. The man is scripted to be as ordinary as possible – employed in a mundane office, with an archetypal wife – yet the troubling nature of his dreams causes him to seek out a psychoanalyst to help comprehend his disturbing nocturnal visions. The film combines stop-motion animation with live-action footage and is full of Svankmajer’s fantastically surreal representations of the human psyche. While the narrative contains the usual psychoanalytic motifs (mother trouble, castration anxiety etc.) the film is also a puzzle in the vain of Inception or Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.
The trouble starts in this tenuous combination of genre. While stereotypical and obviously meant to be funny in this way, the aspects of psychoanalysis employed are so superficial and condensed that Svankmajer has created a disservice to the psychoanalytic tradition. Like Leonardo DiCaprio’s cringe-worthy ride through the ‘elevator of trauma’, Surviving Life fosters the flagrant assumption that the unconscious is readily accessible and that trauma can be defeated through recognition alone. Moreover, the slow explanation of events maintains the lack of cinematic engagement that these mind-game films repeatedly present. The image is secondary to narrative as it imposes its riddle through plot alone. Filmmakers like Svankmajer need to return to the master of this genre, Alain Resnais, to remember that the cinema can be both narrative and image/sound: think Je t’aime Je t’aime.
Finally, we are treated to a terrible happy ending – the awful curse of mainstream narrative. Truly, circular series like Bold and the Beautiful are better demonstrations of psychoanalytic theory, and I found myself wishing I was at home, on the couch, in front of this midday program with a packet of Tim Tams. For those interested in the cinema’s capacity to literally define itself as wish-fulfillment, Surviving Life presents another disturbing installation in the series of psychology for the uninspired. —Lauren Bliss
Wasted Youth – dir. Argyris Papadimitropoulos & Jan Vogel
Adolescence is a strange time. Seeing teenagers travelling in packs, one is struck by how awkwardly they negotiate their place in the world. Despite possessing great strength of conviction, teenagers are not yet trusted by broader society, and thus occupy a strange no man’s land before most are incorporated through ritualised renunciation of their youth (the 21st) and by committing themselves to institutionalised labour. But these rituals and institutions are threatened in the current global economic climate, leading to a heightened inter-generational tension.
Wasted Youth follows the exploits of a group of Greek teenagers on a blistering summer day in recessionary Athens. For the most part, they do what teenagers do – they skateboard, they drink, they talk shit and they test the waters of their sexuality. The counterpoint to this youthfulness is provided by the parallel story of a depressed, middle-aged father who hates his job, finds little gratification at home, and carries a perpetual look of pain on his face.
Admittedly, this polarisation of youth and adulthood is exaggerated, but where the film succeeds is in its portrayal of a generation in transition. This generation is marked by uncertainty – economic, political and environmental. A generation of adults struggling to explain the state of the world by referring to the traditional Evils (socialism, terrorism) shift their gaze towards young people, looking upon them with fear, dreading what these strange creatures will inflict upon the world. Greece, in its current state of crisis, is a flash point for this conflict, and the first shot is heard in Wasted Youth. —Kim Jirik
Michael — dir. Markus Schleinzer
Included in the official selection at Cannes this year, Michael is a frightening view into the world of a criminal who attempts to lead an ordinary life while housing a ten-year-old boy in his basement. The film does not follow the generic plot construction of a conventional Hollywood film. We never find out when or how the young boy, Wolfgang, was captured by Michael and imprisoned in his basement. Instead, director Markus Schleinzer focuses on Michael’s everyday life. Much of this film is about space. Through the protagonist, Schleinzer lays bare the fundamental divide between inside and outside spaces. In the context of his external façade, Michael comes across much like an average middle class citizen, working hard in an office to get ahead. Even the aftermath of the financial crisis does not affect Michael’s career. Rather than getting laid off, he lands a promotion. In the outside world, Michael’s behaviour never even so much as hints at his criminality. When prompted by his sister to come over for Christmas, Michael says that he will be spending the holiday with his girlfriend in Germany. Completely naïve about Michael’s secret, his sister doesn’t even bat an eyelid.
Yet as each weekday comes to an end, Michael’s abhorrent criminal nature is exposed on screen, before the audience, in his neatly kept, suburban house. Michael’s monstrous behaviour is always hidden. Security blinds closet the activities Michael undertakes at home and clearly demarcate the house as a fortified space. What is interesting about Schleinzer’s debut is the way he plays with audience expectations. The uncomfortable subject matter makes the film difficult to view and when it is broached you start to wonder why you would make a conscious decision to watch a film like this in the first place. Schleinzer is very careful about what he lays bare to the audience and this is what makes Michael a very intelligent accomplishment. The film treads a thin line on the paedophilic subject but it is one that is balanced and careful enough not to go as far as it could. With that said, it goes far enough. The sequences between Michael and Wolfgang are uncomfortable and most of the time what makes them jarring and confronting is the power of suggestion more than anything else. As the scenes between Michael and Wolfgang unfold, one can never be too sure how far Schleinzer will go to expose Michael’s crimes.
This film is clearly the work of an Austrian director, and in some ways it resembles the earlier works of Michael Haneke (Schleinzer worked as casting director for Haneke’s The White Ribbon and The Piano Teacher). The austere feel of the film, the lack of emotion expressed by characters, are traits similar to those of Haneke’s The Seventh Continent and Benny’s Video, among other films. Benny’s Video is irrefutably a critique on televised violence but it also prompts a reflection on Austria’s collaboration with the Nazi regime in World War Two. The ominous secrets housed by the protagonist in Michael, and the divide between what is shown on the outside and what is apparent inside, elicit a dialogue with Haneke’s works. However discreet it may be, it is worth noting.
Michael’s vigilant attempts to keep his immorality closeted begin to crumble as inside and outside start to collide. This is not an easy film to watch but it is worth the effort. Susan Sontag once said something along the lines of “A good work of literature is one that is re-readable.” I’m not sure if this statement holds in the case of cinema. Michael is certainly not a film I would want to see again any time soon but is it a substantial accomplishment for a debut. —Fiona Shewan
