TRAILER: Cinema Release: Pianomania

Film: Pianomania

REVIEW: DVD Release: Lovely Rita

Film: Lovely Rita
Release date: 9th August 2010
Certificate: 15
Running time: 76 mins
Director: Jessica Hausner
Starring: Barbara Osika, Christoph Bauer, Peter Fiala, Wolfgang Kostal, Karina Brandlmayer
Genre: Drama
Studio: Artificial Eye
Format: DVD
Country: Austria/Germany

A portrait of claustrophobic adolescence within the confines of a bourgeois Catholic Austrian family, the ‘lovely Rita’ of the title appears to be a typical brooding teenager, but there are darker consequences to this seemingly everyday tale.

Rita is an only child who displays classic adolescent truculence in response to the strictures of her family and school. Her parents lead a life hidebound by convention and routine – socialising with the neighbours, shooting birds for sport, and repeatedly berating Rita for her sullen attitude. There is an uneasy imbalance of power within the family, where the father’s unpredictable temper creates an atmosphere of constant tension, and the mother seems to enforce the father’s tyrannies with a smile of twisted satisfaction.

School offers no respite for Rita. She is ostracized by her classmates, whose apparent good manners and piety provide an effective veneer for their maliciousness. Her only friend is one of the neighbour’s sons, Fexi, a boy of frail health several years younger than her. The scenes with Rita and Fexi provide the only real warmth in the film, as they give vent to the playfulness of youth or express their emotions in ironically theatrical dancing.

But Rita jeopardises this friendship when her sexual advances to Fexi are discovered by his family. With this avenue of affection closed to her, she develops an unhealthy interest in the local bus driver. Repeatedly feigning illness or inventing excuses to leave school to follow him, her overt attention eventually leads to a seedy encounter in the toilets of a nightclub.

The recklessness of Rita’s behaviour creates a growing sense of foreboding. When she kidnaps the seriously ill Fexi from hospital, her lack of empathy for the physical danger she is placing him in, despite his evident uneasiness and distrust, imply borderline psychosis rather than mere teenage rebellion. Rita’s destructiveness escalates to bring the film to its dramatic conclusion…


The seemingly everyday nature of the film’s subject and setting is reinforced by the way the film was made. Shot on digital video, the low production values and subject matter are reminiscent of educational films made for schools, while the drab ‘70s decor and clothes – even though the action is present day - lend an air of Abigail’s Party to the bourgeois social life of Rita’s parents. Director Jessica Hausner used a non-professional cast for the film, and on a superficial glance you might believe yourself to be watching a fly on the wall documentary, featuring unremarkable people in an amateurish piece of filming.

But the film’s lack of ‘filminess’ perversely reinforces the impact of the story. This is not a poetically beautiful depiction of teenage alienation. There is no soundtrack to ameliorate the darkness of the film’s themes. Rita, although pretty, is no poster girl for adolescent angst, with her permanently lank greasy hair. In the film’s bleak view of humanity, we aren’t given any explanation of the inner life of any of the characters, and there is a lack of understanding or communication between them.

The film’s amateur cast cope well with their task. Barbara Osika’s nuanced portrayal of taciturn misery is full of conviction, and Christopher Hauer, playing the young Fexi, gives a very naturalistic performance. The scene where they giggle and dance together is one of the best in the film, conveying a genuine feeling of warmth and pleasure in each other’s company. In contrast, the dark undercurrents of the relationships in Rita’s family are expressed in anger and unvoiced disappointment. Karina Brandlmeyer plays Rita’s mother with an almost robotic resignation to her family role. Wolfgang Kostal effectively conveys the steely grip of an emotional tyrant on his family, creating an atmosphere of trepidation as his wife and daughter watch and wait for the next outburst of irrational anger.

The most troubling aspect of the family dynamic is that, every time Rita does something which is genuinely disturbing – such as abducting Fexi from the hospital – her parents make no attempt to question her or reason with her. They merely lock her in her bedroom for this, but her father will shout at her for the terrible transgression of leaving the toilet lid up. Although silence is commonly the weapon of teenagers, a defence against being patronised or misunderstood, it’s also a weapon here for adults to maintain the status quo and retain control. A pessimistic picture is painted of the helplessness of adolescence within a society which is concerned with bourgeois family appearances, and which displays an empty and mechanical piety with no moral honesty or belief to underpin it.


The low tech production values create a surprisingly effective medium for this bleak exploration of family life. Not the most uplifting viewing experience, but an honest and brave approach at portraying the familiar theme of adolescent alienation in a harsh and realistic light. KR

REVIEW: DVD Release: Hotel

Film: Hotel
Release date: 9th August 2010
Certificate: 15
Running time: 83 mins
Director: Jessica Hausner
Starring: Franziska Weisz, Birgit Minichmayr, Marlene Streeruwitz, Rosa Waissnix, Christopher Scharf
Genre: Mystery/Thriller/Drama
Studio: Artificial Eye
Format: DVD
Country: Austria/Germany

Director Jessica Hausner’s fourth film follows the experiences of a young woman who comes to work at a quiet hotel in an isolated forest location. Her predecessor disappeared in mysterious circumstances. Will she fall victim of the same unknown fate?

A sense of unease pervades the hotel as Irene’s duties there commence with a tour of the building, beginning in the deserted basement, lit by flickering fluorescent lights in classic horror film style. Irene is young and inexperienced, away from home for the first time, and further isolated by having to live in a room in the hotel formerly inhabited by Eva, her ill-fated predecessor, while local employees live in the nearby town.

The staff at the hotel are oddly cold and unfriendly. The police make brief appearances, questioning staff regarding the disappearance of Eva, or dredging the pond in the grounds for evidence - although their actions are never elucidated, and the outcome of their investigations never explained.

Irene is further disturbed by a primitive doll displayed in a glass case at the hotel. This is apparently in reference to a local legend - the Lady of the Woods, a woman who lived in a cave nearby during the 16th century, healing the sick with her knowledge of herbs, until accused of sorcery and burnt at the stake. Irene dreams repeatedly of walking down a corridor in the hotel towards an unknown darkness. As hostility towards her among the staff increases, there is a growing sense of fear and menace, with the film’s inevitably dark conclusion almost coming as a relief from the accumulation of seemingly trivial yet disturbing incidents at the hotel…


The film’s location in a dark hotel in the woods is a classic setting for a conventional horror film, but Hotel produces something far more unexpected. A sense of unease builds through the film’s understated performances, sparse dialogue, austere aesthetics and evocation of alienation and isolation. It is shot with a stark colour palette – grey, white, brown, black, forest green and terracotta. The banal ugliness of the hotel’s interior creates a feeling of unhomeliness, the failure of its polyester attempts at cosiness only highlighting the unsettling inhumanity of such a place. Even more disturbingly, the woods surrounding the hotel don’t evoke the peace and beauty of nature. Their unnaturally perpendicular and regular tree trunks are reminiscent of a stage set, claustrophobically artificial and darkly lit.

The careful use of sound in the film also contributes to a strong sense of loneliness. The silence of the building is broken only by harsh, everyday noises – the creaking of the manager’s shoes, a key turning in a lock, the tinny kitsch of elevator muzak. Irene’s dreams are pervaded by a noise like radio interference, which cuts to the muted whine of the hotel alarm. In the woods, there is a humming sound but its source – a plane? running water? – is not identified, increasing the sense of unease. The failure of dialogue to produce any understanding or warmth only emphasises the insurmountable silence. Conversations are perfunctory or hostile. Irene has a date with a man from the local town, but, during their brief conversation, he misunderstands a question she asks him, his self-satisfied smile emphasising the lack of empathy between them. He spends the night with her, but this just seems to be a further failed attempt by Irene to make an emotional connection with anyone in the film.

Much of the success of the film hangs on Franziska Weisz’s performance as Irene. She conveys an apprehension which is itself fearful of discovery and articulation, of being ridiculed or judged. Her subtly conveyed aura of profound unhappiness suggests the inevitability of a catastrophic fate – whether due to the cruelty of her colleagues, or to the possibility of supernatural dangers lying within or outside the hotel. The truculent sexuality of Birgit Minichmayr’s performance as the jealous colleague Petra provides a strong foil to Irene’s reticent nervousness.

There are obvious parallels with two other horror films. The dark corridors of the hotel, leading to who knows what fearful places, are reminiscent of The Shining, while the legend of the witch in the woods, associated with the disappearance of a hiking party decades earlier, has echoes of The Blair Witch Project. Enjoyable as Jack Nicholson playing psychotic may be, Hotel is a far more understated matter than either of those films. There is no darkly melodramatic dialogue hinting at Eva’s fate, or horrors revealed hidden behind basement doors. The only “scream” moment is a silent one, all the more effective for its suggestion of the paralysis of a scream in a nightmare. Director Jessica Hausner has said that the type of horror films which feature monsters provide a form of relief for the audience, as they give fear a face; her aim in Hotel, instead, was to explore the essence of fear itself.

What Hotel successfully creates is that sense of what Freud called the “unheimlich” or “unhomely” – the uncanny nature of that which is familiar to us, yet subtly, disturbingly out of kilter. The setting of the hotel is banal and everyday, yet disconsonant elements accumulate. The absent Eva acts as a double to Irene – even her discarded glasses fit when Irene tries them on – and her disappearance calls into question the reality of Irene’s existence as an individual, and the possibility that that existence can be allowed to continue. The film raises questions which are never answered. Is the disappearance of Irene’s necklace and the smashing of her glasses an act of human malice, or is there a supernatural influence emanating from the woods? Do Irene’s dreams of the hotel corridor prefigure some horrific revelation yet to come? If so, why is there a sense of calmness and relief when she walks into the darkness waiting at the end of the corridor? The final image of Irene in her red uniform dwarfed by the black woods is a powerful one, echoing the primitive fear of fairytales, a modern day Little Red Riding Hood entering the Germanic forest.


The film’s atmosphere is cleverly and coherently constructed through its stark and minimal aesthetics, understated performances and sparse dialogue. Although it may be billed as a horror, it’s the antithesis of cheesy or gory examples of that genre, while some viewers may find its open ended conclusion frustrating. A strangely gripping and artful story, subtly horrific in its depiction of human isolation. KR

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