Spotlight on Jessica Hausner

A spotlight on the Six feature films to date of Jessica Hausner.

Lovely Rita (2001)
Hotel (2004)
Lourdes (2009)
Amour Fou (2014)
Little Joe (2019)
Club Zero (2023)

I have to credit Sam Juliano for helping me come across Austrian director Jessica Hausner. In Jan 2011, Sam Juliano placed her film Lourdes as his top film of 2010. I hadn’t heard of that film or seen anything by Jessica Hausner up till that point. I rectified my blindspot and found Lourdes to be a brilliant combination of dry wit, humour and documentary. The film’s open ended presentation of faith and belief made me recall the style of Todd Haynes’ Safe and Lee Chang-dong’s Secret Sunshine. I thought of Todd Haynes’ Safe again when viewing Jessica Hausner’s newest film Club Zero (2023) but Club Zero goes off in a different direction. Both Lourdes and Club Zero are fascinating films that contain multiple styles and don't neatly fit in a single category. I felt a proper spotlight was needed to fully appreciate Jessica’s directorial style and see how the other films fit.

Hybrid genre

All of her 6 films tackle a different subject and on first glance appear to have nothing in common with each other. However, one common classifier across all 6 films is that each film is a blend of multiple genres and can’t be easily labeled as a single genre.

Lovely Rita appears to be a straight forward coming-of-age film but there is a shock in store especially if one isn’t aware of the real life incident that inspired the film. Hotel combines elements of horror, folklore in an artistic manner without any of the jump scares or dissonant music that one associates with horror films. The film also has a nod towards David Lynch (Twin Peaks curtain) and Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining (hallway shots). Amour Fou appears to be a linear period film but the double suicide in the film puts a completely different spin by the time end credits roll. Little Joe combines sci-fi, horror and science in the most unexpected manner. Lourdes and Club Zero use dry wit to examine how faith and belief shapes people.

Of all the six features, Lourdes and Club Zero compliment each other nicely. Both films show how people are impacted by their beliefs: Lourdes shows a positive side in which people’s beliefs can provide them a way of healing and hope for their lives but Club Zero shows a negative side where blind belief can lead to a cult like following where believers are led down a potentially dangerous path. The increase in polarizing behaviour since 2020 and the increase in cult like worshiping certainly makes a film like Club Zero as highly relevant in our contemporary world.

Loose Threads

With the exception of Amour Fou, the remaining films have a degree of vagueness about the ending. The most abstract and open ending is that of Hotel while Lovely Rita, Little Joe give enough clues for viewers to know what will unfold next. Lourdes leaves a lot for the viewer to interpret events while Club Zero narrows down its focus but still leaves it up for the viewer to know what will happen to the students who are led away by their teacher.

Film Style

Jordan Raup’s insightful interview with Jessica Hausner as part of Film at Lincoln Center’s retrospective on her films helps shed light on her style. These words by Jessica standout: “Normally when I start a new film, I have a very simple logline in mind. It’s a short sentence or word that is the starting point.”

These words help explain how each film can grow from a single seedling of an idea. In the interview, Jessica explains the real life incident she read about that formed the genesis of Lovely Rita (spoiler alert) and Amour Fou and provides insights about the other films. She also addresses the abstract ending of Hotel. The interview was published after the release of Little Joe so Club Zero is not covered by the interview.

All of her films are insightful portrays of female characters who have to make crucial decisions. Amour Fou is the only film where the main character isn’t a woman but even in that film, the female character has to make a critical decision. The films show a thoughtful narrative arc which charts out a character’s journey and growth.

It is an interesting exercise to contrast this style of Jessica Hausner with that of her countryman Ulrich Seidl. Hausner is interested in exploring incidents that lead to a character’s decision and even the aftermath from their choices. Ulrich Seidl is instead invested in showing the suffering his characters face and in most of his films, he is fixated on sexual events.

The Films of Ulrich Seidl

Films seen or revisited as part of this spotlight:

Models (1999)
Dog Days (2001)
Import / Export (2007)
Paradise: Love (2012)
Paradise: Faith (2012)
Paradise: Hope (2013)
In the Basement (2014)
Rimini (2022)

Boredom. Alienation. Despair. Misery. Helpless. Depression.

The above words can be used to describe the mental state that majority of characters experience in Austrian director Ulrich Seidl's films. His films are not known for depicting happy, cheerful characters. With the exception of Models, the characters in most of his other films are rarely depicted in cinema. They are characters that are on the outskirts of society who don’t find themselves in situations where a positive outcome will occur. The same can apply to subjects in his documentaries as well.

Ulrich Siedl is not a subtle director who lets viewers imagine things on their own by leaving non-relevant items out of the frame. In his films, the camera continues to focus on characters in their moments of weakness, awkwardness or rock bottom. In addition, his fictional films feature a mix of professional and non-professional actors. All of this gives his films a vérité or realistic feel. The works can come across as Docudrama in some cases as well.

Dog Days (2001)

Boredom:

Bright hot sunny days. Just another day in the suburbs. Nothing ever really happens. Silence and Sun. How to rid of the boredom?

Trim the hedges.

Or just sit around the pool.

Or one can engage in boring mechanical sex orgies.

A microcosm of a nation or an independent culture existing within a nation?

Ulrich Seidl's Dog Days is set in an Austrian suburb. But nothing in the film can be used to describe Austria itself -- the people depicted in the suburbs may be fictional characters or based on real life individuals but their stories can't be used as a lens to observe an entire culture. But can a suburb ever represent a culture? Even though American Beauty was praised for highlighting the suburban life, it was not representative of the American culture. Director Sam Mendes and writer Alan Ball could easily have portrayed a different set of happier and more confident characters who lived on the other side of the street. Similarly, Ulrich Seidl could have focused on characters who didn't live such bleak and depressive lives. But happy characters don't present audiences with many intelligent challenges. Not to mention that misery tends to win more awards!

Import/Export

Import Export looks at the lives of two characters who cross the border to make a living -- Olga leaves Ukraine for Austria while an unemployed Austrian youth heads to find some work in Ukraine. The film is shot in a documentary style which gives realism to many of the sequences. However, in keeping with his in-your-face style, Siedl ensures the camera doesn’t turn away and stays focused on visuals which add nothing to the story, such as being focused in between a woman's leg in the internet porn office. A few decades ago such shots would have ensured critical arthouse praise and described as “edgy”. Now, this tactic and style appears hollow and manipulative. It feels like Seidl has purposely included sequences which push the poverty and helplessness of the character (for example, the choice of jobs that Olga gets helps one to sympathize with her).

Paradise Trilogy

Ulrich Seidl’s Paradise trilogy does mark a high point in his directorial achievement with all 3 films a culmination of his style and methodology. The works stand on their own even though there is a connection between the three female characters in the films. Paradise: Love focuses on Teresa (Margarete Tiesel), whose daughter Melanie (Melanie Lenz) is the main character of Paradise: Hope. Paradise: Faith is about Anna Maria (Maria Hofstätter) who is Teresa’s sister and Melanie's aunt.

The “paradise” in the film’s title represents each character’s sisyphean attempts to get out of their personal never ending hell. However, as the three films show, their attempts to claw out of their hell only pushes them further back down.

Paradise: Love

The best film of the trilogy focuses on Teresa’s trip to Kenya to escape her regular life and engage in sex tourism. The film manages to pack in many vital subjects such as colonialism, racism, capitalism while depicting events with a pinch of dry humour.

Paradise: Faith

Anna Maria is devoted to her religion and seeks salvation in it including self-flagellating herself. Yet, her resolve is tested when her Muslim husband returns.

Paradise: Hope

The third film focuses on Melanie, Teresa’s teenage daughter. Since Teresa is in Kenya and her sister Maria is busy with her religious camps, there isn’t anyone to look after Melanie. So Maria drops Melanie off at a diet camp where overweight teenagers go through drills aimed at changing their ways. There is a coming-of-age aspect to this film as 13-year old Melanie develops feelings of love. Unfortunately, she develops those feelings towards her middle-aged camp counsellor.

Rimini

Richie Bravo (Michael Thomas) makes a living by singing songs and pleasuring elder women at the titular Italian resort. One can tell that Richie’s best musical years are behind him but none of that seems to matter to the women suitors who are willing to pay him for pleasure. Things take a turn when a young woman Tessa (Tessa Göttlicher) appears claiming to be Richie’s daughter and demanding support payments. Richie’s desperate situation and appearance reminds a bit of Mickey Rourke’s Randy character from Darren Aronofsky’s The Wrestler. However, The Wrestler had more dramatic weight as Seidl allows some dry humour to enter the film in keeping with his style.

Changed perspective

Back in the day, I used to look forward to seeing any Ulrich Seidl film that appeared at a film festival. However, that is not the case anymore. Seidl’s style feels one dimensional where he is only interested in showing the misery or desperation of his characters. The script puts the characters in situations where they are stuck at rock bottom. His inclusion of characters on the fringes of society may have been edgy once but feels out of touch now given how the world has changed over the last few years. There is no attempt to look at the societal situation or larger world that the characters find themselves in and how that world impacts their situations.

Best Films from Austria, Belgium, Greece, Holland, Ireland, and Switzerland

Doing a deep dive into a specific region or nation’s cinema often reveals blindspots and gaps in one’s knowledge. This proved to be case when compiling a list of top films from Austria, Belgium, Greece, Holland, Ireland, and Switzerland for Wonders in the Dark’s “Rest of Europe” spotlight. The gaps again highlight the lack of viable legal options to see many classic films from these six nations. There are some exceptions though when it comes to older films from these regions such as Chantal Akerman’s 1975 film Jeanne Dielman and Paul Verhoeven’s 1973 Turkish Delight, both of which are easily available. The oldest film in this list is Michael Cacoyannis’s 1956 Greek film A Girl in Black and that isn’t a surprise because until the late 1990s, his films such as Stella (1955), Zorba the Greek (1964), Attila 74 (1975) were the most common Greek films available to rent on VHS tapes at my local video stores (yes those physical spaces). Next most common Greek films available were those of Theo Angelopoulos. Things changed after 2010 when newer Greek films became available due to works of New Greek cinema playing at most film festivals and finding distribution after their festival runs.

Top 15 films from “Rest of Europe” Poll: Austria, Belgium, Greece, Holland, Ireland, and Switzerland

1. Homo Sapiens (2016, Austria, Nikolaus Geyrhalter)
2. L’Enfant (2005, Belgium, Jean-Pierre Dardenne/Luc Dardenne)
3. Jeanne Dielman, 23, quai du commerce, 1080 Bruxelles (1975, Belgium, Chantal Akerman)
4. The Vanishing (1988, Holland, George Sluizer)
5. Rosetta (1999, Belgium, Jean-Pierre Dardenne/Luc Dardenne)
6. Father and Daughter (2000, Holland, Michael Dudok de Wit)
7. Turkish Delight (1973, Holland, Paul Verhoeven)
8. A Girl in Black (1956, Greece, Michael Cacoyannis)
9. The Weeping Meadow (2004, Greece, Theo Angelopoulos)
10. Lourdes (2009, Austria, Jessica Hausner)
11. The Boat is Full (1981, Switzerland, Markus Imhoof)
12. In the Name of the Father (1993, Ireland, Jim Sheridan)
13. Revanche (2008, Austria, Götz Spielmann)
14. A Town Called Panic (2009, Belgium, Stéphane Aubier/Vincent Patar)
15. Dogtooth (2009, Greece, Yorgos Lanthimos)

Honourable mention:

Man Bites Dog (1992, Belgium, Rémy Belvaux/André Bonzel/Benoît Poelvoorde)

HOMO SAPIENS

HOMO SAPIENS (2016, Nikolaus Geyrhalter, Austria/Switzerland/Germany)

In 2006, ruins were a tiny portion of Jia Zhang-ke's STILL LIFE and Pedro Costa's COLOSSAL YOUTH. But a decade later, they are the main focus of HOMO SAPIENS, an absolutely stunning documentary from Nikolaus Geyrhalter.

The film is a haunting and beautiful glimpse of our world without humans. We see real locations that are either abandoned or in a state of ruin. The film lets the everyday sounds filter in, sometimes the noisy waves or winds or in some cases birds flying in and out of the spaces. The end result is mesmerizing, engaging and contemplative. The film provides us enough moments to see our world with new eyes, complete with its waste and needless objects. It also gives a snapshot of what would happen if people had to leave a location immediately and what they would leave behind.

At times, the images evoke the Zone in STALKER and SATANTANGO. In this regard, we are given a view into the ultimate apocalyptic event without the usage of any special effects.

One of the best films of 2016!

Lourdes

Lourdes (2009, Austria/France/Germany, Jessica Hausner)

Religion is a divisive element in the human race. It causes wars, divides families, heals and saves people while also leading them down a destructive path. There are struggles over whether God exists and then over which religion is the true path to salvation. Reincarnation is not accepted universally nor is the promise of afterlife. Yet, a majority of the human race still holds faith in some form of religion or God. Then there are those who do not believe in God but believe in an entity of some kind that holds sway over humans. The various faiths may differ but they are still united in their belief towards an omnipresent yet unseen force. The only substantial evidence comes in the form of a miracle, a sign that a higher power does indeed exist. This sign could be an act of a statue accepting a form of human devotion (example: the drinking of milk by Ganesh statues) or it could be an unexpected healing of a person.

Jessica Hausner’s film takes place in Lourdes, a place where millions flock every year to either get healed or observe a sign from a higher power. If people's intentions for making a pilgrimage to Lourdes is a selfish need, then it is inevitable that the small town will be buzzing with gossip and anticipation. The film shows that gossip spreads like wildfire because everyone believes they have an equal chance to get healed. One would expect a dedicated religious person to have better odds of observing a miracle but there are no rational answers as to who can get healed. In Hausner’s film, even the priests are forced to concede the often repeated statement “God works in mysterious ways”. As a result, each and every person who heads to Lourdes believes that a miracle is within reach.

The main character of Lourdes, a gentle and smiling Christine (played perfectly by Sylvie Testud), does not hold any bitterness in her heart, even though she is confined to a wheelchair. Christine also does not let her limited mobility get in the away of making various trips around Europe. Her conversations indicate that she often travels on pilgrimages and cites Rome as her favourite on the basis of the Italian capital’s cultural superiority over Lourdes. Christine has feelings for one of the male officers accompanying them on their pilgrimage trip but those feelings are only one way until Christine is touched by a miracle. The unexpected miracle brings some delight in people around Christine while arouses jealousy and distrust in others. The distrust arises because a miracle is portrayed to be like winning the lottery -- once someone is cured, then no one else can win the life changing prize on a particular trip.

Jessica Hausner brilliantly presents her film with dry wit and humour. The pilgrimage events are depicted documentary style while the script gently pokes fun at the beliefs, rituals and certain egoistic people seeking a miracle. The film does not openly satirize the characters but instead allows audience to derive their own sentiments. Such a vague and open ended presentation of faith and belief brings to mind the style of Todd Haynes’ Safe and Lee Chang-dong’s Secret Sunshine, two films that also present events in a straight forward manner while subtly eliciting laughs at the expense of people who blindly buy into someone else’s beliefs.

Calgary International Film Festival 2010, preview 1

The 2010 Calgary International Film Festival (CIFF) kicks off in less than 2 weeks time. The film selections continue to grow in technical and artistic strength each year and this year the festival has some amazing films on display, with the Mavericks competition category showcasing some of the best films of the year. Last year, Mavericks contained some worthy films such as Karaoke (2009 Maverick winner), Be Calm and Count to Seven, Everyone Else and Fish Eyes but this year's selection is much stronger than the 2009 list.

Manuel di Ribera

This visually stunning film is a fascinating mix of Lisandro Alonso and Bela Tarr yet is completely original. The lonely journeys of Manuel, conducted with the aid of boats, has touches of Alonso (from both Los Muertos & Liverpool) while the mostly grayish/dark environment and the drunken locals' distrust of Manuel feels similar to Tarr's The Outsider and Satantango. Also, the film brilliantly plays with the concept of reality by having two almost similar scenes of an event incorporated into the film -- one real and one imagined. The audience is left to figure out what the reality is.

Note: The isolated Chilean island seems to echo the island in the third short of Andrés Wood's Historias de fútbol.

The Intern

Clara Picasso's sublime film cleverly uses a Buenos Aires hotel setting as a springboard to examine wider issues, such as male-female power games and the thin boundary that exists between private and public life. Not a single minute is wasted in the film's brisk 64 minutes. Almost at each 20 minute segment, the viewer has to track back to the previous segment to get a clue as to mystery or relationship tussle taking place on screen. The end result is an engaging film.

R

Stand by for the one of the most brutal and dark films of the year!! The tag 'dark film' is easily thrown around but in the case of R, the tag is entirely justified. The film makes last year's wonderful Un prophète look like a feel good happy film. Besides being completely savage, R is intelligent and that is demonstrated by a clever perspective shift two-thirds into the film which shows the similar hierarchies of two rival gangs.

The Robber

A highly entertaining yet intelligent film. This film is an example that an accessible film can be made without clichés or spoon feeding the audience. The two highs of running and robbing give Johann’s life meaning and it is clear these habits will eventually take a toll on his life. The entire film is defined by fast movement, shown by Johann's marathon runs or his perfectly timed car getaways. Remarkably, the story is not fiction and based on a real life character.

Hunting & Zn

This powerful Dutch film shows how a complicated relationship can be strained when lies and a pregnancy enters the equation. Like last year's brilliant Everyone Else, this film is bold enough to look at the nasty side that exists in all relationships and thereby causes the audience to get deeply involved with the film. As a warning, pregnant women or couples expecting a child might want to brace themselves for an emotionally challenging film.

You All Are Captains

This fascinating award winning black and white film demonstrates that even an improvised film needs a structure to make the work engaging. The film's first 20 minutes feature a filmmaker teaching school kids how to use a camera. The filmmaker has no script or goal in mind and a result, frustrates his students who are puzzled by the filmmaker's motives. After the kids complain, the filmmaker is replaced with another director who gives a structure thereby letting the film's brilliance shine through. The ending of the film in color puts the whole work into perspective including the first 20 minutes. A film and filmmaker to watch out for.

Lucky Life

Lee Isaac Chung deserves a lot of credit for making a poetic film that deals with cancer in such a tender manner that one never gets the sense of impending death that will take over one of the characters. The film is more concerned with mood than specific details as most of the conversations appear to be improvised and not scripted cinema, which adds to the film's fluid flow. The film has a very cool mood around it and when the characters meet each other, there are smiles and tender moments throughout reflecting the strong friendship that exists.

Cold Water of the Sea

This Tiger Award winning film (Rotterdam) adds an artistic layer on top of an accessible coming of age tale. The parallels between a young girl and woman is interestingly shown as the two characters form reflections of each other. The beautiful landscape of Costa Rica contrasts the internal struggles of the characters.

Putty Hill

A unique and interactive film that blurs the line between documentary and fiction. The interactive aspect is executed by having the actors in the frame stop what they are doing and look towards the camera to answer questions by an unseen interviewer. And once they are done answering the questions, the camera steps back and films the action.

And finally, this year there is a Canadian entry in competition -- Snow and Ashes. It is a film that I am looking forward and is the only one that I have not previewed from the 10.

Cruel harsh reality or fiction dressed up as life?

Despair. Agony. Anger. Misery. Helplessness. Depression.

The above words could be used to describe the emotions that some soccer fans might have felt last week at their nations failure to qualify for the 2008 European Championship in Austria/Switzerland.

Or

The above words could be used to describe the emotions that the characters experience in Austrian Ulrich Seidl's films.

Boredom:

Bright hot sunny days. Just another day in the suburbs. Nothing ever really happens. Silence & Sun. How to rid of the boredom?

Trim the hedges.


Or just lay around the pool.


Or one can engage in boring mechanical sex orgies (what, no pictures!!).

A microcosm of a nation or an independent culture existing within a nation?:

Ulrich Seidl's Dog Days is set in an Austrian suburb. But nothing in the film can be used to describe Austria itself -- the people depicted in the suburbs may be fictional characters or based on real life individuals but their stories can't be used as a lens to observe an entire culture. But can a suburb ever represent a culture? Even though American Beauty was praised for highlighting the suburban life, it was not representative of the American culture. Director Sam Mendes and writer Alan Ball could easily have portrayed a different set of happier and more confident characters who lived on the other side of the street. Similarly, Ulrich Seidl could have focused on characters who didn't live such bleak and depressive lives. But happy characters don't present audiences with many intelligent challenges. Not to mention that misery tends to win more awards!

Reality or fiction pretending to be reality?:

In both Dog Days & Import/Export, Seidl has filmed scenes in real locales (suburbs, apartment complexes with all the mess & garbage or an internet sex chat room) with a mix of non-professional and professional actors. Also, the camera keeps a slight distance from the characters allowing the audience to feel like a silent observer ("fly on the wall"). Such tactics appear to give the two films a verite feel and it is tempting to label the movies as 'realistic'. But that realistic feel disappears every time Dog Days rapidly cuts to a different character -- those multiple cuts do provide a reminder that Dog Days is still a manufactured film.

One can compare Seidl's style with that of Philippine film-maker Brillante Mendoza. Mendoza has shot both his 2007 films Slingshot and Foster Child on location as well (shanty towns) with a mix of professional and non-professional actors. But Mendoza used close-ups and long takes in equal proportions to fully involve the audience. Plus, his movies had more interesting story lines.

Suburbs with a difference:

American Beauty focused on a suburban family with the teenagers given some screen time. Larry Clark's Ken Park also focuses on suburban issues but looks at the movie from a teenager's point of view. Whereas, Seidl's Dog Days looks at older & retired people in the suburbs. But the age does not stop Seidl's characters in engaging in ménage à trois or sex orgies much like characters in a Larry Clark movie.

Timing:

I am glad that I first saw Seidl's 2007 film Import/Export before visiting his older 2001 work, Dog Days. Import/Export focuses on two central characters and does not hide the ugliness and misery in these characters lives. But the movie is not as harsh and savage as Dog Days is. In fact, the hopelessness and cruelty shown in Dog Days makes Import/Export look like a feel good happy movie!

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Dog Days (2001): Rating 6.5/10

Import/Export (2007): Rating 9/10