Import Export

Whereas Ulrich Seidl in "Hundstage", his first non-documentary film took the hottest days of the year for the description of apathy, brutality and humiliation in society, his new film takes place in a cold scenery. And that in a double sense: While in the East (mostly in the Ukraine) there is a deep winterly climate, in the West (Vienna) the relations and the social environment are characterized by coldness.Seidl's films have always been controversial because of the docu-like unrelenting gaze of their pictures,which abstain from any commentary and because of their description of social milieus and phenomenons one usually does not perceive or doesn't want to.All that applies also to "Import Export".Here we find scenes of grotesque disgust, in which the spectator is ashamed of watching and blaming the camera for its rigidity.On the other hand these films create some kind of maelstrom,which is difficult to escape from.There always is the question:Does he exploits his protagonists or not.Well, everyone has to find his own answer: I don't think so because showing the situation does not mean its denunciation.The story depicts in two unrelated strands two diametrical movements: From East to West and vice versa.The title already refers to the films main subject:The goods-like character,which the globalized capitalistic world imposes on the people.The society is in a desperate state ; nevertheless it is Seidl's most human film.He seems to show empathy for his two protagonists and even if there is no sort of Happy-End - the film has no real end at all,but just leaves its figures alone- the hope remains,that they have got a little bit of strength and decisiveness,which could make a more self-defined life in the future possible.Or maybe not.Every Film of Seidl makes you leave the cinema thinking,that the whole world and the people are in a desperate and hopeless state,but here we have at least little moments of tenderness,in which we see people fighting for their dignity.A rigorous film for the lovers of contemporary austrian film(Albert, Glawogger,Haneke) and definitely no "entertainement".

No matter what you think about a film like Import/Export, you have to have some kind of reaction to it. It is an unsettling, bleak look at a couple of lives that the viewer will rarely think about unless confronted with in a film like this. The story takes place in both Ukraine and in Austria and focuses on 2 lives of very different people who share a similar circumstance of being at the end of the line in the place that they live in. Both seek change and their circumstances take very different shapes and fates but share a similar intention, to find a better life.

The director and writer give us little hope in their depiction of these 2 lives and how their environments constantly conspire to either keep them down or challenge their will to survive and change. It is a story at once about Eastern Europe and a story about the world's 'lower classes' and their monumental struggle against inertia and their past. It is a movie filled with images, humor, highs and lows, and, graphic scenes of sexual play that all add to the base quality of the human experience that exists not only in Eastern Europe, but, many place in the world today. Human beings have created incredible technology and yet there is still so much ignorance, cruelty, and, general meanness in the world. A rough film told with a keen eye toward a subtle message.

By no means a happy film, it is nevertheless, so overwhelmingly well intentioned that it deserves some attention. Fortunately this fairly long (and some say slow) film is very much well worth sticking with. Frighteningly frank and 'in your face' at times, not least in the desperate sequences with the naked Ukrainian girls struggling to put their fingers where their Austrian paymasters are yelling for them to do. It no surprise that people with money will exploit those without but it seems an awful situation that the EU should allow a situation where it is more profitable for a Ukrainian nurse to travel to Austria and act as some house slave. There is not really any formal narrative flow here but we follow the aforementioned nurse going one way and a pair of Barely sane Austrians going the other way to try and sell bubble gum and gaming machines to a people that can obviously not need either. A mix of professional and no-professional actors ensure that this is gritty reality and I have managed to not even mention the incontinence pants in the Austrian geriatric ward. Illuminating, wretched and desperate but also somewhat heart-warming and vile. Good old Germans eh?

Many film's about sad, boring lives are themselves boring (and not truly sad). Not so Ulrich Siedl's remarkable 'Import/Export', which tells a simple, and fundamentally depressing, story at great length, but with compelling naturalism. Not only that, but Siedl shows an uncanny ability to find interesting shots: the film has a haunting quality, and in every scene there's something that draws the viewer's attention and makes one think. The plot, such as it is, tells the story of two people, a Ukranian woman to emigrates to Austria in search of a better life, and an Austrian man who ends up in Ukraine; in Hollywood, their stories would inevitably be drawn together, but Siedl keeps them in parallel throughout. One link is that both are involved (at different ends) in the Ukranian sex industry, and Siedl's uncompromising depiction of this attracted some notoriety for this movie; but it's a long way from a titillating film.

The acting is excellent, and the way the characters evolve is fascinating. Ekatarina Rak's Olga is allowed to inch slowly towards a better life in Austria, albeit at a high price. Paul Hofmann's Pauli is even more interesting, a loner and misfit denied the chance by his environment to become a good person; disaffected from his present life, he can find no route map to another one. Not only do the two stories not converge, but one ends with a lengthy series of hospital scenes in which the origin of the central character is of decreasing importance; this could be a film about lonely people anywhere. Indeed, for all the film's "naturalism", it's depiction of social reality might perhaps be questioned, I would have guessed this movie was set in 1997 rather than 10 years later (although my own estimate of reality is based on the newspapers, so it may well be this that is wrong). Certainly the film is not an explicit political indictment. But it is a sympathetic and original insight into existential loneliness and the harshness of life in the modern world.

Two parallel stories - one about a young Ukrainian immigrant in Austria (Olga), and another about a young Austrian traveling for work reasons in East Europe (Pauli). It is a story of simple people with a dark future and gray unhappy lives. The movie was shot in Austria, Slovakia, Rumania and Ukrania, mostly with non-actors in a documentary sort of style. It has a 1980s sort of visual style, and it has a depressing mood and colors.

The movie, despite being in Cannes official selection, has a sluggish script, poor dialogues and lacks in focus, all factors that rest credibility to the story.

The movie has beautiful and shocking scenes, they won't leave you indifferent for sure. Some of them are so because of their sexual nature, others for their sadness, others because of their tenderness, and others because depict situations that are not easy to see without getting an emotional reaction.

The characters of Pauli, Olga, and Pauli's father are well played by Paul Hofmann, Ekateryna Rak and Michael Thomas, respectively. However, the drawing of the characters lacks in dramatic depth and the viewer resents that. We see them struggling in their lives, but we don't understand why they got to that point, what is their personal background -which is only hinted-, what is troubling their souls. On the other hand, Olga's story is told in a straightforward clear way, but Pauli's story is not, despite his character being, a priori, very interesting and cool.

The story doesn't seem to have any purpose, just to catch glimpses of a sad reality. If that was the director's intention, a documentary would have been more respectful and less pretentious. The end, on the other hand, is also unresolved.

I found that the selection of some Rumanian, Slovakian and Ukrainian depressed areas offers a misleading view of countries that, otherwise, are modern and normal. However, those areas are presented as if they were the real country, i.e. as if all of those countries were like that. Marginal suburbs can be found anywhere in the developed world, not just in those countries.

I'm appalled at the poster of the movie being the one it is, which is utterly misleading. The movie is not about sex, is about life and death, about two different life paths that lead nowhere but in opposite directions.

Nothing new in the horizon and nothing memorable either, but is an interesting movie not easy easy to watch, but engaging nevertheless.