I did at the Palm Springs International Film Festival, where the screening ended with one person clapping for two seconds and several people voicing support when I yelled, "that was pointless b#!!$%*t" as the credits rolled. This warmed-over bit of German suburban angst is one of those films where you wonder why you bothered to sit through the whole thing. Still, it's worthwhile art-house fair that will stay in the mind on account of its hermetic, drifting, almost dreamlike quality. If the boy was merely sociopathic, then much of the useful meaning is eroded. It wends its way slowly and interestingly enough, but the somewhat degenerate ending undermines much of what the film was surely trying to achieve along the way. Mild derangement is very much the order of the day here. Having set up their lives of suburban serenity, they have too much to lose - everything becomes unbearably precious and the effort of keeping together what was so laboriously acquired causes mild derangement in the most ordinary people. Sensitisation of society is on the upcreep. Frustration, disillusionment, nihilism, betrayal and revenge blur any over-riding theme, which most likely is the new preoccupation of the age: insecurity. With so many issues at play though, the meaning is muddled.
Sounds of mastication are used frequently - repulsive, but it lends a surreal, intimate effect.
His cousin's family has its own emotional issues, a neurotic, artistic mother and son, the latter on the booze while practising Berg's piano sonata (providing a sophisticated tone) for an audition his mother a bored housewife of impulsive passion. The boy is dealing with his father's recent suicide and an evident sense of abandonment resulting in various behavioural phenomena that sociologists will have terms for. It has a dusky, brooding quality - feeling almost like a mild version of Funny Games or Visitor Q.
This simple substrate economically combines a surprising number of subtle issues: grief, boredom, alcoholism, stress, lust, and homosexuality, amounting to quite a timebomb in a deceptively domestic situation. An emotionally disturbed teenager turns up at the home of some repressed relatives.
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