Lovely Rita

Whose sick joke was to describe this film as a comedy? It is a drama, family drama or teenage drama that does not have anything with comedy. It is pretty dark film showing typical teenagers' ways of dealing with growing up, especially when they have no support, just punishment measures from their parents. Unfortunately, sometimes it ends up tragically

Lovely Rita is not lovely at all. She is a sulky, deceitful, calculating teenager bent on seducing the local bus driver. She is very much an outsider at school and is the source of many arguments at home.

In the title role Barbara Osika gives a good rendition of a frustrated and unbalanced youngster, despite the fact that the script is both rather dull and uninteresting.

A couple of sex scenes are suggested rather than portrayed in any detail. The faces of the participants are immobile and unseen by the camera. The back of the young girl's head is seen blocking out the face of the bus driver. With very little movement the rest is left to the imagination of the viewer. The scene is short. One wonders if the censor has been at work here.

The director seems to have an obsession with the backs of heads, but sometimes it can be quite effective. The bus driver is filmed from behind as he sits at the wheel ( just as the passengers see him) while Rita exchanges fleeting glances with him in the mirror above his head.

It's amazing how the lid of a pedestal toilet seat can start an argument which grows from day to day to an unexpectedly very tense situation.

The final climax comes quite suddenly and adds a nice bit of drama sadly lacking in the earlier part of the film.

A portrait of claustrophobic adolescence within the confines of a bourgeois Catholic Austrian family, the 'lovely Rita' of the title appears to be a typical brooding teenager, but there are darker consequences to this seemingly everyday tale. Rita is an only child who displays classic adolescent truculence in response to the strictures of her family and school. Her parents lead a life hidebound by convention and routine – socialising with the neighbours, shooting birds for sport, and repeatedly berating Rita for her sullen attitude. There is an uneasy imbalance of power within the family, where the father's unpredictable temper creates an atmosphere of constant tension, and the mother seems to enforce the father's tyrannies with a smile of twisted satisfaction.The low tech production values create a surprisingly effective medium for this bleak exploration of family life. Not the most uplifting viewing experience, but an honest and brave approach at portraying the familiar theme of adolescent alienation in a harsh and realistic light. KR

I saw this film at Cannes Film Festival in 2001 and was very impressed by the ending. However, when I saw Kaurismaki's Match Factory Girl last year, I found that the ending and the movement of the camera picturing Lovely Rita is almost same with Match Factory Girl.

The stories of those two films are different, but when you see the ending itself, you could say they are sharing the same ending.

The film still remains good to me, but the ending belongs to AKI KAURISMAKI

this movie wants to show the fake facade of a Catholic, bourgeois family, and it does so by boring the user for 80 full minutes.

shaky camera, bad lightening, strange doings by the characters. everything feels acted and not real.