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Following on from the exorcism drama Requiem and the Stasi surveillance thriller The Lives of the Others, Longing is further evidence of the current resurgence in German cinema. The first full-length feature of writer-director Valeska Grisebach, whose acclaimed graduation film Be My Star gained a limited British release in 2002, it’s a deceptively simple and low-key account of a love triangle, which unfolds in the countryside outside of Berlin.
Markus (Andreas MUller) is a metalworker and volunteer fireman, who is deeply in love with his devoted wife Ella (Ilka Welz), who was his childhood sweetheart. But on a training weekend with his fire service colleagues, he sleeps with a waitress Rose (Anett Dornbusch), and finds himself torn between the two women.
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Like the Dardenne brothers, Grisebach is sparing in her use of dialogue and she focuses on the material and the physical — whether it‘s shots of faces. landscapes or objects - allowing us to ponder the inner lives of these three individuals, who are all shaken by the intensity of their feelings.
Sex and death are intertwined in Longing, paving the way for the tragic conclusion. ‘Life itself is a puff of air — suddenly it’s gone,‘ observes one stranger, and it‘s as though Markus is propelled by his direct confrontation with mortality during the very opening scene, in which he attends the aftermath of a double suicide bid, into acting on his erotic desires. Impressively performed by the non-professional cast, Longing is also blessed with a Brechtian coda that provides an unexpectedly fresh perspective on the preceeding events. (Tom Dawson)
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Born it April, 1974, Budapest. Hungary
Background Havrng started as an actor at the age of 1.1 in anarchistic 1988 Hungarian drama The Docurrrentator, Palfi durckly decamped to the other Side of the camera realismg that 'acting was not for me'. His taste for the weird and underground stayed true. however. and wrthin ten years he had directed his vrcrous satirical short film debut A Hal. By 2002 he had made his first feature Hukk/e. a dialogue- free portrait of a small rural community in Hungary. Raw and ascetically Visceral the film was a kind of fusion of Boschian imagery. Jerzy Kosmski's The Painted Bird and the early work of Davrd Lynch.
What’s he up to now? Five years in the making, Patti’s new film Taxrdermia has finally made its way onto Scottish screens. And it's a beauty. This tale of three degenerate generations of men from WWII to modern day IS equal parts Cronenberg, Karoly Makk and Terry Gilliam but far more shocking.
What he says about the message of hls fllm ‘Any comments on the political or historic background of the film are only there to show how the era yOu are born into can affect you. A British vrewer only needs to
apparent}; nun negutiahle pregnanrtx tn her ahusixe hushanti know that in Hungary, first we had a fascist regime in WWII then a communist regime and now it is a capitalist regime. which is the worst extreme.
Interesting fact Depending on funding Palfi has three films in production: an expensive fairytale, a mid-budget foreign legion drama and a low budget film which is ‘under construction'. We say give him the money for all three. (Paul Dale)
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24—"; Aug 27.7 THE LIST 21