Directed by:
Frauke FinsterwalderCinematography:
Markus FördererComposer:
Michaela MelianCast:
Christoph Bach, Margit Carstensen, Jakub Gierszal, Leonard Scheicher, Corinna Harfouch, Sandra Hüller, Johannes Krisch, Ronald Zehrfeld, Carla Juri (more)Plots(1)
A journey through a surreal Germany: A police officer in a bear costume. A female documentary filmmaker who is unable to find an interesting story. A pedicurist who carefully sets aside the hard skin removed from the feet of his aged female patient. A rich couple that refuses to sit in a German-built car. A history student uninterested in a class visit to a concentration camp. A wild man training a raven in the woods. In this anthology film, all are bound by family ties or a moment of coincidence in a country where the sun always shines and everybody is beautiful, successful and happy. This is until they reveal their darker side, and we discover that the step from idyll to inferno is a short one. Finsterworld is an ironic anti-thesis of the Heimatfilm and full of malicious observations and sharp-tongued remarks. Rarely has German cinema produced so much black humour in one fell swoop. (Berlinale)
(more)Reviews (2)
Finsterworld is made up of separate stories about the relationship woes of people who reveal the hidden kinks of their partners, plus one on the topic of guilt and false accusations. And somehow these stories intersect in a place that you would least expect. Seeing this as a festival film was okay, but in the company of Michael Haneke or Alejandro G. Inárritu, it seems lacking. It contains only one really good scene (with witty dialogue in the car about the pros and cons of the German character), the storylines are not particularly well thought out and the characters with kinks are not portrayed “cutely” enough for us to sympathize with them.
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At first glance, Finsterworld is a truly strange and unconventional film. In the course of the plot, there are several intersecting storylines whose characters are bizarre and even twisted in a way. It offers a glimpse of all sorts of perversions and strange dialogues, and you are not sure what direction everything is going to take, as the plot is quite unpredictable. I have to say that I was really annoyed by the character of the sleazy and sociopathic Maximilian, but I felt quite sorry for Dominik and the teacher Nickel. I was also intrigued by the reflection on Germany by native Germans. At times the film evoked Iñárritu's Babel in plot and atmosphere (the hermit, the shooting, the interweaving of stories), but I felt it was missing something, something that could really pull me in and kill me off.
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