Dog Days (2001)
(Hundstage)
Country: ÖST
Technical: col 127m
Director: Ulrich Seidl
Cast: Maria Höffstatter, Alfred Mrva, Erich Finsches
Synopsis:
A look into the lives of the residents of a Viennese suburb during a weekend heatwave. They include a home security salesman, an estranged couple who still occupy the same house, a retired man who pays his cleaner to perform exotic striptease and a near-anorexic girl caught up in a sadistic relationship with her boyfriend.
Review:
A deeply bleak and dispassionate examination of the 'decline of the western world' à la Haneke, only more 'improvised'. Apparently the director shot over sixty hours of material before editing it down, and used some non-professional actors. The distancing is almost Brechtian, however, so deprived are we of close-ups and point-of-view shots. Meanwhile we are spared no indignities as the characters experience every humiliation, mostly self-inflicted, and we take in their flaccid bodies and dour expression. The environment is suburban anonymity: neat rows of houses, lawns, empty pools, shutters and Ikea furnishings.
(Hundstage)
Country: ÖST
Technical: col 127m
Director: Ulrich Seidl
Cast: Maria Höffstatter, Alfred Mrva, Erich Finsches
Synopsis:
A look into the lives of the residents of a Viennese suburb during a weekend heatwave. They include a home security salesman, an estranged couple who still occupy the same house, a retired man who pays his cleaner to perform exotic striptease and a near-anorexic girl caught up in a sadistic relationship with her boyfriend.
Review:
A deeply bleak and dispassionate examination of the 'decline of the western world' à la Haneke, only more 'improvised'. Apparently the director shot over sixty hours of material before editing it down, and used some non-professional actors. The distancing is almost Brechtian, however, so deprived are we of close-ups and point-of-view shots. Meanwhile we are spared no indignities as the characters experience every humiliation, mostly self-inflicted, and we take in their flaccid bodies and dour expression. The environment is suburban anonymity: neat rows of houses, lawns, empty pools, shutters and Ikea furnishings.
(Hundstage)
Country: ÖST
Technical: col 127m
Director: Ulrich Seidl
Cast: Maria Höffstatter, Alfred Mrva, Erich Finsches
Synopsis:
A look into the lives of the residents of a Viennese suburb during a weekend heatwave. They include a home security salesman, an estranged couple who still occupy the same house, a retired man who pays his cleaner to perform exotic striptease and a near-anorexic girl caught up in a sadistic relationship with her boyfriend.
Review:
A deeply bleak and dispassionate examination of the 'decline of the western world' à la Haneke, only more 'improvised'. Apparently the director shot over sixty hours of material before editing it down, and used some non-professional actors. The distancing is almost Brechtian, however, so deprived are we of close-ups and point-of-view shots. Meanwhile we are spared no indignities as the characters experience every humiliation, mostly self-inflicted, and we take in their flaccid bodies and dour expression. The environment is suburban anonymity: neat rows of houses, lawns, empty pools, shutters and Ikea furnishings.