Searching Eva

A young woman reveals scandalous topics of her personal and professional life, as well as exploring confidential, intimate traumas of her stolen childhood and eventual promiscuous behavior. An Italian immigrant living in Germany, Eva is seeking for the meaning of life while working as a part-time model and full-time sex worker. She spends the holidays back home, making amends with her past, as she re-encounters her previously heroine-addicted mother, and other relatives. Winner of a Special Mention at CPH:DOX Awards, director Pia Hellenthal crafts a hypnotizing documentary, an observational and compassionate look at dysfunctional behavior, rebellion and resistance. Provocative, unashamed and enthusiastic, Hellenthal captures an essential portrait of this generation's quest for identity and fulfillment.

This movie will bore and offend conservatives, Christians, luddites, & basically anyone living in a bubble who looks back on the past with uncomplicated nostalgia. This is reality in the digital age. Voices that would have been silenced in the past Have huge platforms to spread their ideas and culture and there is nothing that can be done to stop them. The more you try and prevent it the more power it will attain.

Saw this at IDFA 2019, the documentary filmfestival in Amsterdam. I cannot say anything positive or negative about this movie, as I have no idea what it was all about, and why we should be interested in lead protagonist Eva. Her decision to open up her life for anyone who wants to know, may be groundbreaking but it does not bring anything useful. It is not thought provoking either. She may be the "living proof" (quote from IDFA synopsis) of something, but I don't get it.

Possibly I got stuck on the grey-haired side of a generation gap, siding with people who detest all modernist phenomena. Still confused and uncertain, I randomly sampled 5 out of 11 critics reviews listed on IMDB, all proving to be overly positive. Nevertheless, their arguments did not change my position. Time to agree to disagree?? There is technically nothing wrong with the documentary, it may be enlightening for people who wants to know that this is all about, and I sat it out without a problem, hence the 5 (out of 10) score.

I just finished watching this documentary. I am confused actually. Indeed Eva is an interesting character but aside from that the movie itself is in identity crisis. Director is feeding us some random messages written for Eva, then we are watching Instagram story like dull images with music. At some point we listen parts of her early life in Italy. Somehow the girl apperently gave some hope to strangers on the internet while herself going down on a spiral of depression, alcohol, drugs. I liked the fearless film making style of the director but at the same time movie is a mess and felt pointless. Maybe someone else would tell her story much better I don't know. I can't say it's a bad one but at the same time not good either.

Take the most defective young women you can find, preferably a junkie, add some radical modern feminism and critical theory, and you get this movie.