|
Twice the title flashes onscreen, before the protagonist enters, lagging behind his joking colleagues, then after his final view, hanging from a lavatory latch. "A quiet sort," Herr R. (Kurt Raab), utterly average at the doctor's office but for his migraines (cp. Ray's Bigger Than Life). Doughy and sallow, the draughtsman is tucked away at the edge of the frame, each scene a wide chunk of quotidian alienation. (When he does take center stage, drunkenly calling for fraternity during an excruciating toast, the effect is even more forlorn—submerged pain suddenly foregrounded.) Frau R. (Lilith Ungerer) is a nervous driver, their son struggles with a lisp, nothing out of the ordinary, "just the general atmosphere." Raspberry cake with the folks, a drop of envy in the drink with the "independent" friend (Hanna Schygulla), hide and seek in the snow. Baudelaire's ennui, "the sour fruit of incurious gloom," a domestic fuse lit by Rainer Werner Fassbinder and Michael Fengler for the benefit of Akerman's Jeanne Dielman. One drab living room after another, the ultimate purgatory for the muted anguish of a numb bourgeoisie. (The wobble and grain of the camera are noted via architectural advice, "technical perfection is not enough.") Amid the continuous flow of dead chatter, a melodic flash or two from the squashed lead: Humming a half-remembered ditty to a pair of shopgirls who can't quite stifle their giggles, and catching up with an old chum and warbling a sacrament from their school days. Then the rupture with candelabra in hand, from nattering neighbor to sleeping tyke, a listless rampage finished just as "Stand by Me" begins playing on the telly. A W.C. Fields comedy set in Munich in winter, a point missed in Haneke's dour rehash (Der Siebente Kontinent). Cinematography by Dietrich Lohmann. With Franz Maron, Irm Hermann, Harry Baer, Ingrid Caven, Lilo Pempeit, Peter Moland, and Peer Raben.
--- Fernando F. Croce |