Berlin Dispatch. 2.

All in all, a fine day at the Berlinale, beginning in the morning with en Soap (A Soap), hardly overwhelming but noteworthy nonetheless for its juxtaposition of melodrama and post-Dogme realism; the delightfully over-the-top political farce, Bye Bye Berlusconi! in the afternoon; and in the evening, Michael Glawogger's new feature, Slumming, somewhat reminiscent structurally of a stream-lined Magnolia but far, far darker.

Frank Thiel, David Dencik, Trine Dyrholm and director Pernille Fischer Christensen

Setting out to make her first feature, Pernille Fischer Christensen was determined to keep things as simple as possible. Perhaps she could construct a film around just one character in a single room? No, she realized, she'd need another for interaction. With the exception of two minor supporting roles a few glimpses of peripheral characters, she pretty much stopped there: two characters in two rooms. Veronica (David Dencik), a transsexual once known as Ulrik, waits for the go-ahead from the Danish state for her final operation. She's the crux, the inspiration for the film. Christensen spoke this morning of meeting someone like Veronica and being thrown off, not knowing how to address her and suddenly sensing all her notions of gender shifting.

So Charlotte (Trine Dyrholm), who moves into an apartment one floor up, might be seen as a sort of surrogate for the director - intrigued by Veronica, then disturbed when she finds herself attracted to her as well. What's unique about en Soap, though, isn't so much the story as a clash of styles. Chapters are introduced with black-and-white stills as a narrator asks, What does Charlotte really want? Or, How will Veronica react to the news that... and so on.

Christensen admires the work of Sirk and Cassavetes and wondered if she couldn't draw on the work of both; what's more, she says, there are strains here of both television soap operas and what she calls the "anti-soap," Scenes From a Marriage being a prime example. In soaps, everything's on the surface; in Bergman, everything is underneath. That's a lot to bite off and chew for a little story, but, while en Soap doesn't measure up to previous Berlinale entries from Denmark, it does signal a new talent eager to do anything but play it safe.

So I'm following the Competition when, next on the program is Syriana, which isn't actually competing and will open relatively soon here in Germany anyway. I opted to wait and catch instead Bye Bye Berlusconi!, whose title alone is all but irresistible. The clincher: it's the directorial debut of Jan Henrik Stahlberg, an actor who's worked with a few rowdy German comedians and who co-wrote Muxmäuschenstill.

BBB! begins in chaos before settling down to rambunctiousness and lapsing only now and then into hysteria. Italian children laugh and eat ice cream (that's another thing: the cast is all-Italian, and naturally, that's the language of the film as well), when: an explosion. A van races off. Newscasters announce that the prime minister has been kidnapped. We're cutting all over the place - inside the van, the street, the video, the flames. And cut, cut, cut - says the producer. We've been watching a film within a film.

And faceless someones are making it very hard for the team to proceed. The cast, which doubles as the crew, has to slip clandestinely from location to location; the story is rewritten as circumstances demand; and the deeper into it they work, the more ominous the signs that they may be stopped - by any means necessary - before they ever wrap.

I hate having had to miss the press conference for this one, because I was intrigued: To what degree do Stahlberg and his own Italian cast and crew believe in this invisible threat to the film-within-the-film's cast and crew posed by a right-wing alliance of shady business interests, remnants of the old fascist regime and the Mafia? Regardless, this is a quick and fun ride I'd recommend to anyone who hasn't given much thought in the past few years to the alarming developments we'd be hearing a lot more about if Italy weren't a western democracy and a staunch ally.

Michael Glawogger

I may be wrong, but I sensed that Slumming wasn't particularly liked by the crowd I saw it with; regardless, despite an ending that dissolves rather than resolves, I was swept along and can well imagine that actress Pia Hierzegger was won over to the film for the reason she said she was: reading the screenplay, she simply couldn't stop, wondering what would happen next.

We begin following three trajectories: a filthy rich yet sharp and curious young bastard (August Diehl) and his roommate (Michael Ostrowski), a middle-class teacher (Hierzegger) and a ferociously aggressive drunk (Paulus Manker, disturbingly brilliant). It's from the two ends of the economic spectrum that the greatest challenges to the audience arise. The drunk is the narrator, abusing us nastily and mercilessly; the rich kid gets his kicks playing expensive and cruel practical jokes that, unfortunately, are also pretty funny. Once these loose ends clash, it's Pia (her character's name as well) who winds them into knot as she tries to set things right. So does she? We'll never know, and I don't mind. I do know this: each trajectory is steered in a better direction.

Of all the people who've stepped up to the mic for the press following their screenings so far, the one who'd far and away make for the most engaging after-hours conversationist is Michael Glawogger. My scrawled notes from the press conference are far too thick to dip into here, but: it's been twenty years since an Austrian film screened in competition at the Berlinale. I'm glad it's Glawogger who's quenching the drought.

Posted by dwhudson at February 10, 2006 3:16 PM