Hipnosis

The 2023 directorial debut of Swedish filmmaker Ernst De Geer was an intriguing albeit not altogether successful satire about modern millennial relationships. The plot focuses on André and Vera, a young professional couple who have developed a woman's health app they have been invited to present at an elite startup conference. Just prior to their presentation, Vera sees a hypnotherapist to help her quit smoking, but something deeper unexpectedly affects her attitude and behavior. Much of the story revolves around Andre's increasingly desperate responses to Vera's wildly unpredictable actions, which start as comically inappropriate and become more and more bizarre. The film falls short on what direction De Geer decides to take the story as he doesn't fulfill either the dark comedy potential or the more tragic implications of the characters' choices. Asta Kamma August and Herbert Nordrum are stoically effective as Vera and André, though I wish they were directed to play their roles with more comic panache.

I should have left in the middle but I was waiting for something to happen, but it did not. The movie just bacame more and more embarassing. I didn't get why the couple acted the way they did. In everyone's life there are sometimes these situations with great embarassment that you can't control, but it went on and on with no way out. I guess there is some social criticism in the movie. I didn't get it. It was boring. I heard people around me admire the movie but I don't know why. I say to everyone I know don't go. I would realy like to read what others say about this movie because I don't know why it was done.

I thought this was gonna be another movie, in which the woman is a Saint and the man is the Antichrist. There are hundreds of movies like this, in the last years, pure misandric. As a man, i know that there is a very high percentage of bad, even dangerous men. I know also that both sexes are flawed and there are not many Saints : Most of us are just humans.

I am glad it wasn't. There are no heroes and villains here, even though both of the leading characters are equally flawed and they keep harming or trying to manipulate each other, until something is happening during the last minutes (I'll spare the details of course, in order to avoid the spoliers).

So, i liked this movie. When the "MacGuffin" is taking place, it becomes unexpectedly anxiety-inducing. Some people won't find it interesting, maybe they're gonna dislike both the leading characters. Indeed, these characters are not likeable but they were interesting and fun to watch.

What is this movie? There are Ruben Östlund/Francois Ozon vibes. It reminded me also of two other movies : 1) Lemming (Dominik Moll) and 2) La moustache (Emmanuel Carrère). Weirdness and Absurdity but it doesn't get much dark like the previous movies. Hypnosen is more lighthearted and funny. By no means this is a great movie. It's flawed, a bit messy and confusing and i am not really sure that the creators knew exactly what they were doing.

But overall, this is enjoyable and the ending was very good. Maybe the whole movie should have been less chaotic, or i don't know, the opposite and they should go full insanity. I liked the fact that they try something different, not the most original outcome but at least, they were creative.

If you haven't watched this movie, probably my review doesn't make much sense and it's not very helpful. In any case, this is a good comedy/drama (Kafkaesque? Fantasy?) and if you're looking for something different and not easy to categorize, you'll probably enjoy it too.

Sometimes we can all use a little help in changing our behavior when we aren't able to do so on our own, and hypnosis is one of the most commonly employed practices. But, in some cases, it can work so well that we may unintentionally end up overcompensating, prompting us to act out in ways that yield a whole new crop of issues to contend with. Such is the case with Vera (Asta Kamma August), who gives hypnosis a try to quit smoking, a behavior she regards as unhealthy and antisocial. However, Vera's hypnotherapist (Karin de Frumerie) suspects that her patient's reluctance in explaining her reasons for seeking out treatment suggests that she's there for more than just kicking the habit. This hunch leads her to conduct a profoundly impactful hypnotherapy session that produces a radical, albeit somewhat ill-defined, change in her subject's behavior. And, even though Vera seems to relish the effects of this change, it couldn't have come at a worse time: just as Vera and her business and romantic partner, André (Herbert Nordrum), are about to pitch their new commercial venture to a group of select international investors at an elite pitch fest, an event where they receive guidance from a high-profile pitch coach (David Fukamachi Regnfors). During preparation for their presentation, Vera begins acting strangely unpredictably, even disorderly, toward others, including those whom she and André are most trying to win over. So what's going on here? And what, if anything, can André do to salvage matters before everything falls apart? Writer-director Ernst De Geer's delightfully quirky debut feature takes a humorously absurdist look at questions of social conformity, particularly when it comes to differentiating behavior that's gleefully playful from that which is wholly unacceptable, especially in earnestly serious "grown-up" situations. It accomplishes this goal through a captivating mix of hilariously dry wit and cringeworthy drama, one that often makes viewers squirm while questioning exactly what's going on. In fact, at times, the mix can be perplexing enough that audiences may be uncomfortably puzzled by what's transpiring on the screen and what the director is going for - that is, until the surfacing of the big reveal, the one that exposes the source behind the emergence of Vera's erratic behavior, one that plants a rollicking punctuation mark on this often-uproarious offering. Much of the credit for this goes to the film's fine script and its superb ensemble cast, particularly protagonists August and Nordrum, who play off each other well and create a wry sense of humorously driven dramatic tension. I love movies that make it a point to stick pins in sanctimonious balloons and push over sacred cows, and this one does as good a job at that as I've seen in a while. "The Hypnosis" may not be everyone's cup of tea, but I'm only too happy to take more than a few good sips. Pass the milk and lemon, please.

At least half the running time of Hypnosen / The Hypnosis, I thought seeing a movie made by Seidl or Haneke, the famous Austrian film makers who make you feel uncomfortable while watching, yet make you stay until the very end and endure the proceedings. Later in the story, the intentions became clearer, to turn into social commentary. And still later, it changed its purpose again (I think), telling us to drop our social harness.

For lots of reasons we can consider this movie as social commentary indeed, though more or less in disguise. Firstly, it went farther than only exposing the nonsensical culture of sales pitches before an assembly of investors who are eagerly looking for the next niche product that makes them rich and look successful. That alone could have been the subject of a feature length movie. It is the way startups are born, or grow too fast due to greedy investors and meet a stop block. Secondly, another nice topic exposed here is that attending a seminar to practice and iteratively bring the sales pitch to perfection, under the guidance of a renowned guru (or self-acclaimed expert?), is a useless industry and a waste of time and effort too.

Storytelling wise, I was glad to see several plot elements proficiently used. One example was the same Internet/WiFi router appearing twice in two different but important scenes. A second example was the "appearance" of imaginary dogs (mind the quotes, the "dogs" were imaginary), coming about in two also different but even more important scenes.

Apart from the social commentary, there is more interesting stuff. I deduce that the crucial takeaway from the hypnosis session was not getting rid of a smoking habit, but rather loosening the harness we find ourselves in when in company, and especially in situations we are used to call "social" interactions. Not until 3/4 of the running time before the pieces fell in their proper place. It perfectly fits the story with both imaginary dogs that we see before and after this explanation, at least that is as I experienced it in hindsight.

Yet, the final score for me is a 6/10, mainly because I needed some time to grasp what it was all about. It took relatively long to get where the film makers wanted us to be. And I suspect that this happened to others as well. Maybe that is why the movie seems to be misunderstood, a feeling that I got when asking around after leaving the venue. Similarly, the user reviews on IMDB are also mostly beyond the point as I see it. However, maybe I got the message or the morale of this movie wrong as well.

All in all, ample humor and unexpected plot twists kept me awake, eagerly waiting for the next surprise. I was not disappointed, despite being a fan of the SciFi and Horror genre in general, that this time the hypnosis did not plant something evil or dangerous. The plot drove us in a totally different direction, much better suiting the ingredients.