An awesome and ridiculous film that leaves you thrilled beyond the point of your natural endurance
2012
Theatre
The show has suddenly become quite wonderful, and the galvanising factor is the terrific stage debut of Melanie C
Blood Brothers
Music
The British pop music industry may be eating itself but if Muse are the pick of what it can offer the world in 2010 then British music is in rude health indeed
Muse
I was smitten by both Gilberts enormous luxuriant moustache and the intelligence and nuance of this highly entertaining play
I totally recommend Babbo to anyone who is looking for really good and traditional Italian food
Always been a fan but never seen them live. I was ecstatic to be part of this epic event. WOW!
London,
Derek Malcolm's rating
Reader rating
Dir: Ulrich Seidl.
Cast: Ekateryna Rak, Paul Hofmann, Michael Thomas
No hoper: Olga (Ekateryna Rak) is a Ukrainian single mother with little to look forward to
Ulrich Seidl is an Austrian director whose work illustrates the wretchedness of life at or near the bottom of the heap. He does not suggest that society is to blame, or that his pathetic characters are blameless. He just observes, and it is often not at all a pretty sight. Yet the totality of his vision is undeniably impressive, even if his use of real people rather than actors is sometimes disturbing.
The two leading characters here are Olga (Ekateryna Rak), a wan if pretty Ukrainian single mother, and Pauli (Paul Hoffmann), a young Austrian training disconsolately to be a security guard. Neither has much hope of a decent future, let alone a rewarding present.
Olga, having worked as a nurse in a hospital that can’t pay her wages, tries working at a webcamming centre where German men pay to see live nudes over the internet. She then leaves her child with her mother and takes a train to Vienna. There she works first as an au pair and then, when unceremoniously sacked, as a cleaner in a desperately depressing geriatric hospital.
Pauli, having been beaten up by a gang of youths, agrees to accompany his resentful father on a trucking job which takes them across several Eastern European countries. On the way, they drink and visit prostitutes where even he baulks at his father’s cruel treatment of the girls.
This is documentary-like misery, shot in washed-out tones in grey locations. But it avoids becoming a parody of such minimalist movies through its realism and its avoidance of polemic. This is what life is like for hundreds of thousands of people, Seidl seems to be saying, and he doesn’t have to make any comment other than with his camera.
The geriatric hospital, where real patients are treated not cruelly but with scant attention, is perhaps doubtful yet remains in the memory.
Seidl is a special talent, reared on documentary and determined to get near the truth with a placidly baleful eye. You are at liberty to hate or admire his work — but you can scarcely ignore it.
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Morning:
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