FILM | Previews & Reviews
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INTERVIEW: ULRICH SEIDL Uncompromising Austrian filmmaker talks about his Paradise Trilogy, an unflinching exploration of human loneliness
‘I’m interested in the loneliness of modern humanity, but my films are not nihilistic,’ insists Austrian auteur Ulrich Seidl, speaking from his production company office in Vienna. ‘They might be dark and they might seem negative, but what is important is change. I show the negative aspects, because I want to get to the positive by bringing out change. The people in Paradise are all looking for something: they want to escape from their own prison of solitude and to fulfill their longings. I didn’t want to judge them in any way: they all have good and bad traits.’ Seidl’s ironically titled Paradise trilogy, co-
written with his wife Veronika Franz, consists of three standalone films, each focussing on a different female member of an Austrian family during a summer holiday. In the first instalment, Love, a middle-aged divorcée Teresa (Margarethe Tiesel) heads to a Kenyan beach resort in search of romantic fulfillment, whereas in the second, Faith, her devout sister Anna Maria (Maria Hofstatter) travels door-to-door in suburban Vienna seeking to convert immigrants to Catholicism. And in the concluding section, Hope, Teresa’s overweight 13-year-old daughter Melanie (Melanie Lenz) falls in love with the doctor at a diet camp in the Wechsel mountains.
As ever with Seidl (whose credits include Dog Days and Import/Export), the boundaries between documentary and fiction are blurred by his casting of professional and non-professional actors and his use of authentic locations. Turbulent human emotions are offset against his scrupulously controlled visual compositions. The writer-director originally intended the
Paradise project to be just one film, inspired by his interest in mass tourism. However having shot 90 hours of footage, he realised in the editing room that, ‘when it came to linking the individual scenes, it wasn’t working dramatically. The scenes were too intense and so it would not have worked as a six-hour film. So we decided to make three separate films, named Love, Faith and Hope after the main Christian virtues.’
Seidl is known to be a strict taskmaster when it comes to directing his actors – Margarethe Tiesel has been quoted as saying she wished he’d used more carrot than stick during the making of Love – yet he has no qualms about his working methods. ‘I have to trust them, and they have to trust me. So every now and then it’s necessary to be strict with them. Sometimes that’s the only way it works.’ (Tom Dawson) ■ Paradise: Love, Fri 26–Sun 28 Jul; Paradise: Faith, Fri 9–Sun 11 Aug; Paradise: Hope, Fri 23–Sun 25 Aug, Filmhouse, Edinburgh.
70 THE LIST 11 Jul–22 Aug 2013
DRAMA BREATHE IN (15) 98min ●●●●●
Sometimes it’s hard to be a man – when your wife’s hobbies are collecting cookie jars and crushing your dreams; when your dreams of rock stardom are so distant that the evidence thereof is confined to C90 cassette tapes; and when the only person who seems to understand you is a limpid-eyed, lithe-limbed teenage pupil . . . Yes, it’s easy to mock Drake Doremus’ mawkish take on the travails of mid-life maleness. But the fact is that Guy Pearce’s easily-tempted, terminally self-interested Keith doesn’t get much more script sympathy than his horribly sour-faced wife Megan (Amy Ryan), his vapid daughter Lauren (Mackenzie Davis), or Sophie (Felicity Jones), the uppity British exchange student who turns his head and comes between them all. Breathe In has its strengths – gorgeous pebble-
hued cinematography, a fine soundtrack and some neatly judged performances. But on the whole the film’s bitterness feels sophomoric – the attempt of a young director overly affected by American Beauty and The Ice Storm to seem worldly-wise. As they stir the pot of their burgeoning mutual attraction, Keith tells Sophie that she doesn’t seem as young as she is. He’s
right. Because Sophie, with her precocious calm and confidence and her ready supply of condescending philosophical homilies, does not behave or communicate like any 17-year-old who has ever lived. (Hannah McGill) ■ Limited release from Fri 19 Jul.
DARK FAIRYTALE BLANCANIEVES (12) 104min ●●●●●
It’s going to be difficult to get through a review of Blancanieves without mentioning The Artist, so let’s get it out of the way now. Both films are black and white, reduced format silent films in romanticised period settings. Both are immaculately presented, with great performances and inventive use of sound and camera techniques. Both have experienced big awards hauls – The Artist picked up five Academy Awards, including Best Picture, while Blancanieves recently swept the board at the Goyas (Spain’s answer to the Oscars), winning 10 gongs including (you guessed it) Best Film. However, it would be unfair to judge Blancanieves only in The Artist’s shadow. A retelling of the Snow White myth transplanted to the world of 1920s Spanish bullfighting, Blancanieves is a triumph in its own right. Daniel Giménez Cacho is suitably charismatic as dethroned king of the ring Antonio Villalta, and Maribel Verdú is a riot as Snow White’s truly wicked stepmother Encarna: an out-and-out villain. The biggest praise goes to the younger and older versions of Snow White herself (named Carmen in this iteration): Sofía Oria is a delight as the rebellious young girl imprisoned away from her father’s care, while Macarena García is magnetic as the runaway princess who falls in with a troupe of bullfighting dwarves.
As with pretty much every edition of this particular tale, the dwarves are denied any substantive amount of individual characterisation with only the love-struck Juanín (Jinson Añazco) and the jealous Jesusín (Emilio Gavira) given significant character arcs. Another issue is the bullfighting: animal rights activists will no doubt deplore the romanticisation of the sport, and the fact that no bulls die on-camera may only heighten the opinion that this is a rose-tinted version of brutality. But these are really only niggling complaints when it comes to the overall presentation of what is a beautiful and accomplished film. (Niki Boyle) ■ Limited release from Fri 19 Jul.