Reviews on movie Attenberg (4)

Twenty-three-year-old Marina has never kissed. She has a best friend with a wealth of sexual experience and a father dying of cancer. Marina loves Sir Attenborough's animal programs and sometimes all three imitate the fauna.
It sounds like a synopsis of very strange and too daring porn. No, this is not porn, but only the second film by Athena Rachel Tsangari (almost nothing is known about the first). He is curious by a leisurely, measured production, playing at the junction of performative and household. You need to get used from the very first shot to the provocative, but very organic about the framework of the plan style of the director: all three main characters behave a little strange, I would say – like children, although they discuss very adult topics. What else to do in this quiet area?
Sex and death, tactileness and oblivion, freedom and silence - the contrasts that prevail in Attenberg, echo both in Marina and in her environment. The girl learns life, the nature of the internal (through the minimal capabilities of her body as sexual and near-sexual experiences arise) and the external (in programs about animals, in communication with people). The girl grows up, opens up for herself, decides on some actions that are not characteristic of hardened virgins. Finally, the girl learns loss – and this is the extreme line, after which you will definitely not be the same. A calm, almost conflict-free drama of growing up.
The film is simple and clear, devoid of a rich narrative, built on the palette of sensations. Tsangari works at the junction of human and animal, dressing his findings in a comic form of childish pampering with notes of not at all childish eroticism. In one shot, the heroines can spit out of the window, in another – go under the handle and talk about the trees with members, in the third Marina “cuts” with her father in a lexical game, turning the dialogue into a theatrical and performative action. Somewhere in between, there are episodes of riding a motorcycle, a battle of figurines in table football, a flying tennis ball, ringing guitar strings and simply a non-binding existence. Scenes of a purely plastic nature are also expressive (mostly those where the imitation of animals is based). All this together makes a canvas unusual, quiet, sometimes sleepy, but alive, pulsating, rhythmic.
"Attenberg" speaks of simple things in a language as simple but inventive and tangible, traces of which can remain on the skin, lips, behind the ears, in the bend of the elbows, on the boundary of the solar plexus - as if with this film you learned the first kiss, but went a little further. And when the charm ceased to be a novelty, dared to stop. That's how it happens. Just stopped. But the skin remembers, and the lips remember, and the air is charged with the same memory.

7 out of 10

P: Let’s make a picture about a girl who can’t communicate with people.

P: So we need to show her estrangement from society? Does she have family, friends?
P: We have a father, but we will not work out his image. Let's just show them how they parody gorilla games from TV. Perhaps this hints at the artificiality of their relationship. Perhaps we will add the Oedipus complex here. In addition to his father, there is a friend, partly the opposite of our heroine, but she will not be influenced in any way, and will not receive development as a character.
P: Where do we start? What is the first picture?

R: Oh, the opening scene should be memorable and catchy, so that the jury at all kinds of competitions is excited and animated. We need to get their attention right away, make ourselves known. However, we may not get much footage, so let’s randomly insert a bunch of long general plans of nature and the city, as in the documentary. We're going to get to 96 minutes.

P: So she's having trouble communicating? Can't she join the community?

True, but let everyone else behave unnaturally and speak emotionlessly like robots. Yes, I understand that our film is not about the dehumanization of society and the disunity of people. I don't think it's a good move, but damn it, it's so cool!
P: What will happen to the character?

P: He will be the only hero to have survived the change (other than his father, in a sense). Her undiscovered sexuality will wake up, she will find love and begin a long journey to normal human relationships. We will divide the picture into three even parts for half an hour, the transitions will serve as acquaintance and close rapprochement of lovers. After all, we stick to the classical narrative structure, after all!
P: All right. In what way will the film go?

P: Let it be a slow and long story with a colorless and inexpressive picture. Fresh so that the audience will throw salt and spices in the screens. We do not need interesting plans and a game with the camera, the operator will be able to work on autopilot. And the festival gloss and mystery will give us scenes of curvatures and strange walks of friends on the sidewalks. To explain, or at least to justify, we will not do anything.

P: Sounds great! Your vision of history is amazing! Let's get to work!

A certain handwriting is seen in festival films: the atmosphere is as close to reality as possible, the viewer feels the truth of what is happening, however, there is no documentary effect, realism is created by a certain manner of shooting. The handheld camera reflects the subjective feeling of what is happening, through the eyes of the protagonist. The noisy base is illusory approximate, this gives the feeling that the action takes place not somewhere behind the screen, but directly in the room of the auditorium.
Such films are released more and more often, and are created specifically for export abroad for festivals. Presented in Cannes or Venice. A striking example of such a movie is the trilogy of Ulrich Seidl “Paradise: Love” (2012), “Paradise: Faith” (2012), “Paradise: Hope” (2013). In Russian cinema, representatives of such cinema are the directors of the Russian “new wave”: Zvyagintsev, Popogrebsky, Khlebnikov, Loznitsa ...
The film Attenberg (2010) directed by Athena Rachel Tsangari is a vivid example of such cinema from Greece. It was presented at the Venice Festival in 2010. It was shot in the style of “export cinema”. However, the film can not be called innovative in terms of cinematic language, in Greece before that there was “Fang” (2009), which used the same manner of shooting.
Attenberg is the story of Marina, a girl who is not adapted to social life. All her entourage is a sick father, best friend and first man Spiros. The lives of heroes are meaningless. And if the tired, dead look of the father is justified by his deadly illness, but this view is inherent in all the characters of the film. They behave like animals, and even if you do not take into account the obvious copying of gorillas in the games of Marina and her father, and completely animal movements and spitting with her best friend, the main character built around her animal shell, her inner cry.
The theme of incommunicability, begun by Michelangelo Antonioni, is shown in Attenberg as relevant for our days. However, instead of an existential manifestation, Marina is overcome, in fact, by teenage problems, expressed in the absence of a loved one. This is what friends sing about walking down the street. And the song sounds French Ardi, telling about the lack of love in the lyrical heroine of the song, it is called “Find me my boy”.
Marina’s friend Bella, completely like the animal world, meets many partners who are often older than her, but Marina takes small steps in the study of human fauna, which look timid and sometimes absurd. The ending of the film shows us that she really loves only one person – her father, her relationship with her friend and first boyfriend is just experiments that do not carry real feelings.
“Attenberg” is an attempt by the director to create another festival film that allegedly raises pressing questions of modern man. However, the arthouse style is put at the head of the film, which is not quite beneficial for the ideological development of the film.
7 out of 10

The Greek sensual and subtle "Attenberg", begins ambiguously, continues in a childish naive way, lasts with a false seriousness, throwing images and attractions of all kinds of sexuality and erotic fantasies, in fact hides in itself the main and only desire of all living beings - to be happy. Or be happy. Or find your happiness in someone else. Whatever you want.
Had I not known in advance that the director and the writer of the script are the same person (in my opinion, the best combination for creating a picture), I would have assumed this during the first ten minutes of the film, when landscapes smoothly merge with dialogue, and events turn into heroes just as harmoniously as their external confrontations turn into internal conflict with themselves. “What do I want?”, “Do I want what I need or are they different things?” "

The simple truth lies in the complex twists and turns of banal (or beautiful) lives – fulfilling our own desires does not make us happy, but makes us go forward – to new dreams, desires, people. Over and over again leaving behind the old “meaning of existence” and finding it in something or someone else. Isn't that why we usually do this? To establish yourself, to feel needed, desired?
Dotting the i, I remind myself of Attenberg, who, incidentally, is none other than the Greek host of an animal program, that the possibility of happiness in this life for oneself alone is as small as the probability of ending one’s life with anything other than death.