A Film a Week - Happyland

 previously published on Cineuropa

It would be a relatively typical story: a woman prioritises her ambition over loyalty, relationships, friendships and family, leaves town and goes off to make it on her own in the “big, wide world” but ultimately fails, so she has to come back and face the music. Make no mistake, it would be different if that woman were a man because in movies, men get a shot at redemption, while women do not – the best they can hope for is some leniency from their milieu.

An individual’s dealing with the setting of a small town was also the topic of the directorial debut by editor Evi Romen, Why Not You (2020), but that movie revolved around a younger male protagonist and the trauma he survived but cannot exactly be open about. In Happyland, however, we have a woman as the protagonist and failure as the reason for her return. It has premiered at the Diagonale (where it won Best Original Score in a Fiction Feature into the bargain), and although it’s scheduled for national distribution this spring, its chances of international festival travel are slim.

Helen (Andrea Wenzl) is a stylish failure with a larger-than-life artistic ego. After causing the last in a string of scandals in London, she jumps in her Jaguar and drives back to her hometown in Lower Austria, where her mother (Michaela Rosen) owns the titular sports centre. Helen’s future is to manage it in a town inhabited by her die-hard fans as well as people she has crossed, such as her former friends and bandmates.

However, the appearance of an impossibly cool young man named Joe (Simon Frühwirth, the star of Gregor Schmidinger’s 2019 title Nevrland) rocks her world. He comes to her place of work as a candidate for the position of rock-climbing instructor, while he also plays drums with her former bandmates – but his true passion are horses, so his dream is to establish his own ranch. Maybe now would be the right time for Helen to have a serious conversation with her former partner Tom (Michael Pink) in order to learn something about the mysterious young man she is about to fall for.

The script, written by Romen herself, relies too heavily on an attempt to keep the “elephant in the room” under wraps for long enough so that the ultimate revelation will have the right impact. However, the dilemma is “phoned in” early on, so more seasoned viewers can easily guess what is at stake here. Also, the filmmaker’s ethics could be viewed as more than a tad conservative, since her protagonist is being punished for expressing her ambition, while illogically assuming that nobody from her social circle has ever travelled or lived outside of the town.

On the other hand, as a director, Romen manages to overcome these obstacles to a certain extent. She has a knack for nailing the small-town atmosphere, bristling with open secrets and petty feuds. Also, she grasps the trajectory of a (failed) musician’s career path from some kind of artsy, punk-rock scene to harbouring singer-songwriter ambitions. The choice of music and the inclusion of quasi-archival footage in appropriate formats is also quite fitting. Furthermore, Romen manages to get the actors in a very playful mode, and Wenzl uses her theatre chops to construct the big-screen role of her career. In the end, Happyland attains the level of a solid movie that has the potential to talk to regular audiences.

Why Not You / Hochwald

 kritika objavljena na XXZ

2020.

scenario i režija: Evi Romen

uloge: Thomas Prenn, Noah Saavedra, Helmuth Häusler, Ursula Ofner, Katja Lechthaler, Walter Sachers, Josef Mohamed, Kida Khodr Ramadan, Claudia Kottal, Elisabeth Kanettis

Život u maloj i zatvorenoj sredini može biti ubitačan za onoga ko se ne uklapa u vrlo striktne i jasno definisane standarde. U takvoj sredini percepcija traume se povećava eksponencijalno, baš kao i (auto-)destruktivno ponašanje kao reakcija na istu. U svom rediteljskom prvencu, montažerka Evi Romen studira upravo te mehanizme u skoro pa laboratorijskim uslovima malog sela u Južnom Tirolu, odnosno pokrajini Alto Adige u Italiji koja je naseljena uglavnom austrijskim stanovništvom. Film je trijumfovao već na svojoj premijeri na Zurich Film Festivalu, a kolekciju trofeja je upotpunio i na festivalu Diagonale u Grazu. Regionalnu premijeru je imao sinoć u međunarodnom programu Pule.

Mario (debitant Thomas Prenn) je po svemu crna ovca u svom selu koje je zapravo i originalni, nemački naslov filma. Gej je, otpadnik od crkve, zaljubljenik u ples i rekreativni narkoman. Njegov najbolji prijatelj i možda višegodišnja simpatija Lenz (Saavedra) je praktično isto to, uz jednu ključnu razliku. Mario dolazi iz rasturene radničke familije, pa mora da se izdržava povremenim poslovima umesto da ganja umetničku karijeru, a Lenz je sin lokalnih bogataša i vlasnika vinarije, pa su mu audicije u Beču i Rimu dostupnije. Obojica, pak, vole da se ekscentrično oblače i sitnim glupostima sablažnjavaju lokalne seljane, ali nijedan od njih nije spreman da zapravo »izađe iz ormana«.

Situacija za Marija se menja kada se njih dvojica nađu na meti islamističkih terorista u gej klubu u Rimu. U tom napadu Lenz gine, a Mario ostaje sam i pod lupom svojih suseljana spremnih da ga osude za bilo šta, što ga nagoni ka ne baš zdravim obrascima ponašanja koji uključuju konzumaciju heroina i eskapade na javnim mestima u selu i obližnjem gradu Bolzanu. Jedini koji bi možda mogao da mu pomogne je nekadašnji školski drug Nadim (Mohamed) koji je u međuvremenu pronašao smisao života u veri pod paskom mudrog i dobronamernog imama (Ramadan). Može li Mario prevladati traumu dodatno pojačanu inherentno rasističkim i islamofobnim stavovima koji su mu ugrađivani tokom odrastanja?

Međunarodni naslov na engleskom jeziku Why Not You svoje poreklo vodi od jedne od replika koju Lenzova majka (Lechthaler) uputi Mariju nakon što sazna za njegovu smrt i ta replika je zapravo ključni mehanizam psihološkog fenomena zvanog krivica preživelog. Nemački naslov koji poreklo vuče od centralnog mesta radnje sjajno funkcioniše kao nadopuna internacionalnom, ukazujući na to da je zatvorena i zatrovana sredina odgovorna za potenciranje te krivice, ali i za destruktivne mehanizme pomoću kojih Mario pokušava da se nosi s time.

Ta bi krivica i reakcija na nju mogle biti centralne, ako ne i jedine teme filma, ali Evi Romen otvara još nekoliko specifičnih uglova koje možda ne zna kako ili ne može da razradi i zatvori, dakle odnose u porodici, klasne odnose, motiv prijateljstva i pripadnosti, narkomaniju, napete odnose među religijama i kulturama, kao i gej aspekt. Prosto i jednostavno, ona nije scenaristkinja po obrazovanju i afinitetima, pa u tom pogledu Hochwald deluje pretrpano motivima po kojima se tek zagrebalo.

Ono što manjka u scenariju, Evi Romen uspeva da pokrije dobrim rediteljskim instinktima za postavljanje scene, čak i kada one u dramaturškom smislu u formi repeticije »udaraju na isto mesto«. Pojedinačne scene su atraktivne, posebno kada su propraćene eklektično izabranom muzikom, scenografija i kostim su na nivou, kamera i montaža takođe, a Evi Romen svime time diriguje bez ikakvih problema. Izvrstan je i njen rad s glumcima, posebno sa Thomasom Prennom koji je izuzetno talentovan i kojem ona pomaže da tu divlju energiju kanalizira. Hochwald tako postaje i ostaje sasvim solidan film i prilično dobar debi.