Some films are just unclassifiable! The Hungarian movie "Hukkle" with its solely ambient-soundtrack springs to mind, as does nearly the entire output of the Canadian director Guy Madden. When one is faced by such films, one either gives in to the weirdness or wonders what in the world is going on. I tend to fall into the first camp and this German movie, filmed in Bulgaria with a largely Bulgarian cast, is a charming outing. The German-Bulgarian background is an irrelevancy as it turns out, as is the fact that the lead actor Denis Lavant is French, since there is no intelligible dialogue, only names and words that are universally understood like tek-nol-o-gee!
The film is set in a nearly derelict bathhouse in the middle of a desolate plain where younger son Anton attempts to convince his blind father that business is booming, despite the fact that his mother at the cash desk is seldom paid in anything more than buttons. However the three of them do their best to keep things going with their Rube Goldberg machine powering the pumps. Into Anton's very strange life (his father keeps him without shoes so that he can't stray afield) comes the winsome Eva, who dreams of sailing away to the exotic island of the title but who needs a component from the engine to power her ship. Meanwhile elder brother Gregor is attempting to get the lido condemned so that he can demolish it and build soulless apartment blocks.
The picture is shot largely in black and white or tinted sepia and exercises a strange fascination as one tries to take in the most peculiar storyline combined with the largely nonsensical sound. The only solution is to sit back and let this oddity wash over all semblance of reality. Succumb to the strangeness for an ultimately joyful experience.
1 comment:
Definitely odd. What a fully blown swimming bath is doing apparently in the middle of nowhere close to what seems to be a ship's graveyard is one puzzle; the pretence of having a busy pool when it is usually empty to keep the blind
owner happy is another (it is surely something he would have come to realise);
the behaviour of the, at times, naked, nubile nymph yet a third. The overall
impression is one of delightful fantasy despite the rather unimposing setting.
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