November 2001 - Nr. 11
Toronto Film Festival
- Part 2 -
by Randi Spires
We are drowning in information. There are so many publications, websites, broadcast channels and other media that no one could possibly ever keep up. At the same time technologies capable of altering images and sound-bites are also proliferating. How, then, can we figure out where the truth lies and where fiction begins? Are boundaries a post-modern casualty?
This blurring of divisions between fact and fiction and between public and private spaces is one hallmark of the work of Austrian director Ulrich Seidl whose work was featured in the spotlight segment of the 2001 Toronto International Film Festival. He is a very disturbing filmmaker, liable to enrage, engage and depress the viewer all at the same time.
The most accessible of his films is Loss is to be expected (1992). It contrasts the lives of people in two German speaking villages a couple of miles apart geographically, but worlds apart culturally and economically. The prosperous village is in Germany proper, the impoverished one is across the border in the Czech Republic, populated by Germans who stayed on after World War II.
The film is structured around the attempts by Sepp, a retired German villager, to woo Paula, a woman who dwells on the Czech side of the border. At one point Sepp is seen complaining to a friend that German women are too materialistic and only chose a man for his money. Yet it is with material goods that he tries to lure Paula. She lives in a shack with primitive kitchen facilities. He lives in a relatively roomy house with a spacious kitchen and all kinds of modern appliances. At one point he takes Paula to a supermarket where she is awed by the abundance of products and flummoxed by the idea of canned cat food.
Sepp’s place is spotless so it is obvious that he is quite capable of cooking and cleaning for himself. Perhaps he feels it is unmanly to be burdened with these tasks. We never really know but there are certainly no romantic sparks between Sepp and Paula.
The film is punctuated by images of Czech side villagers standing in bare surroundings buffeted by the wind. They stare impassively at the camera for long periods of time. Whether these are images of heroic endurance or stolid acceptance of their circumstances is difficult to fathom.
Seidl has penchant for stripping people naked and having them reveal themselves in absurd situations. In this film a Czech puts a scratchy record on an old-fashioned record player then proceeds to dance and strip to the music. The man’s movements evoke frustration without any grace or sensuality. One suspects that this is something Seidl asked the man to do for the film and is not a normal part of his routine. Or is it?
Dogdays (2000) is Seidl’s most recent film and his first feature. It will probably get a commercial release of some sort in Canada in the new year. The film is a jumble of scripted and improvised elements with a mix of actors and non-actors. Some of these non-actors actually play themselves. For instance, the porn king in the film is played by a real life pornographer and the alarm system salesman really does make his living that way.
The film takes place in a suburb of Vienna during a single day, one of the hot ‘dog days’ of summer. While it purports to knock the vapidity of suburbia, the characters and situations portrayed could probably be found anywhere. With a few exceptions the people seen in this film are not residents of upscale spacious properties. Most seem to live in tracts of small houses with even tinier back yards. The strip malls, porn palaces and sex clubs are all rather desultory. The thankfully brief orgy scene showed no evidence of any joy or real warmth. Be glad you weren’t invited.
Threading through this miasma are the wanderings of Anna (Maria Hofstatter), a crazy young woman, who is always hitchhiking and never going anywhere except on to her next ride. She is constantly being kicked out of the vehicles she rides in for going through the purses and other bags belonging to the drivers while making rude comments about the contents. When not doing that she chatters continually, citing top ten lists of the most popular sexual positions, the most common diseases and so on. Her knowledge is as disjointed as her travels. The landscape Seidl depicts is emotionally stale and culturally and spiritually barren, with a strong under-current of repressed and sometimes not so repressed violence. I suspect that this state of mind is not limited to the ‘burbs but is perhaps more easily reinforced there. But alienation seems to be everywhere on the planet these days and not just in the western world either.
Models (1998) focuses in on the lives of three young blonde models. They are not supermodels by any means but they seem to work fairly steadily. Theirs is by nature a narcissistic and brutally competitive trade. The women are constantly being reminded of their tiniest physical imperfections. "No part of me is perfect". wails one. It is difficult to keep up one’s self-esteem in these circumstances and each girl has her own way of dealing with these stresses for instance the film opens with one of them looking into her bathroom mirror and repeating "I Love You, I Love You" to her own image.
Seidl’s camera intrudes into their private as well as their public lives – with their permission, of course. In the modelling business at this level the girls need to be seen at trendy places and get their names into the media. So the private becomes public. Perhaps this blurring of lines leads to a loss of perspective and accounts for their willingness to allow Seidl’s camera into their bedrooms.
After a hard days work the temptations of readily available booze, drugs and sex (often unsafe) are understandable. After all these girls are unlikely to settle in for evening after evening of quite intellectual pursuits. All this takes its toll both mentally and physically. What happens to these women when their modeling careers flame out?
The girls feel exploited by both the men behind the cameras and those in their bedrooms. In one long powder room scene they conclude that the most reliable intimacy is between women. At the same time, remember, they are bound to be competing with one another for jobs. That means that friendships between them are tightrope walks.
These tales of too much booze, too many drugs and too much bad sex are not really news. While one does come to care for the girls, to a certain degree one is left hanging with a barrelful of questions such as: Could a non-party goer make it in the industry?; Did current supermodels go through this stage or were they able to circumvent it because of their extraordinary talent, if that is the right word?; and are conditions worse now than they were thirty years ago?
It is in the film Animal Love (1995) that Ulrich Seidl’s bias most imposes itself on the material. This look at people and their pets makes no bones about trying to be sympathetic. It is obvious from Seidl’s choice of characters that he doesn’t like animals much and sees those who do love them as somewhat deficient. He obviously has no understanding of the human/animal bond. The subjects he has picked to appear in this work are, for the most part, low-lifes and dysfunctionals. But one can find people of this ilk with or without animals. Consider for instance Jerry Springer’s guests. Some of these people would fit right in.
One homeless man is seen in a pet shop buying a dwarf rabbit. Sure he will use the animal as a new panhandling device, but as we watch him ask people for money for his fuzzy friend he also seems to feel genuine affection for the creature and the bunny doesn’t seem to mind being constantly cuddled.
Another man rants on about freedom and respect but avoids finding any kind of employment. He and a friend adopt a large rambunctious German Shepherd they named Benjamin. The dog is in serious need of obedience training and consistent discipline but neither of these fellows is capable of giving it to him. As a result he is out of control and you know with a knot in your stomach that someday this potentially fine dog will over step some major boundaries and become a candidate for the euthanasia table.
Another man is so out of it socially that he reads a guidebook on how to seduce a women with the same neophyte’s attention that he gives to a manual on how to train a dog. These two activities, of course, are in no way comparable. In another scene a man with a knife fetish forces doggy style sex on his female partner.
One of the most controversial scenes, which caused the film to be banned in some quarters, was one showing a man French kissing his dog. The dog’s tail is wagging and he seems to be enjoying the attention but I hope this is as far as the man goes with physical affection. And I certainly have no plans to French kiss my dog, who is sitting beside me as I write this.
Ulrich Seidl is frequently infuriating but I must admit he is also usually good for sparking lively, debates.
