Antares

Gotz Spielmann is a true auteur. His film-making style is instantly recognizable, weaving a spell. What's going on in front of the camera can be merely someone shutting a door, a couple having explicit sex, a violent car crash, two people having an argument, but that camera is not moving. This makes you highly aware of everything in the frame and everything is there for a reason. You notice colors, especially white, black and red. Virtually no music, except some smoky sax over the credits. His constant use of medium shots remind you that you are not "there," you are just an observer.

The movie portrays a highly contrived, but nevertheless convincing, story on the theme of sexual betrayal. Three couples who live in the same apartment building (but do not know each other) are introduced and their stories are told, one at a time. We meet a very reserved nurse and mother who is having a passionate affair behind her husband's back. Then, a supermarket checkout clerk, not emotionally stable, who has falsely told her Yugoslavian boyfriend that she is pregnant in hopes of hanging on to him. Finally, a divorced woman dealing with a racist and thuggish ex-husband who won't let go.

As the movie progresses, odd events get explained. Once, a couple walking in the courtyard hear a woman scream. Later in the movie we see the scene of the screaming woman.

The movie generates an enormous amount of suspense as it unfolds. Will the nurse confess to her husband? Will the checkout clerk come clean about her false pregnancy? Will the divorced woman be seriously harmed by her increasingly erratic ex-husband? As the last question, it is answered in a harrowing psychological confrontation that will have you on the edge of your seat. What people are eating and where they eat it also seems to matter.

It leave it to others to explain the meaning of the roses in a vase, the dog trainer, the hooker on the corner and other apparent signifiers in the film.

If you liked this, be sure to check out Spielmann's "Revanche," which is even better.

This film tells three intertwined stories of the residents of an apartment building. This style of filmmaking has become popular of late, following the early success of Robert Altman ("Nashville" and "Short Cuts") and Alejandro Inarritu ("Amores Perros" and "Babel"). This one, however, falls far short of those films. Of the three episodes, the first one is the most interesting, featuring a nurse in a loveless marriage having a brief affair. The other two episodes concern low-lifes making each other's lives miserable. Neither the characters nor the stories are particularly interesting. Of course everything comes together in a predictable finish.

With little budget (as the Austrian movie "industry" unfortunately has) obviously a director has to walk with different shoes than Hollywood. "Antares" is a good example of how to make the best of it.

In my point of view very often certain narrative concepts become so much in the thick of things, that characters turn secondary (I don't mean to say I don't like pictures which walk that way). IMO it is refreshing to see movies which succeed not to abstract too much, movies which do not take away too much from their characters because for example various storytelling concepts are requiring it.

With "Antares" for ~115minutes you get insight into various living conditions in Austria before something crucial happens. You see how people are, what their main problem is. And yes of course there is a clear idea behind this picture, but as I said before this idea is not imposed on the viewers. Solitude and isolation are crucial topics in "Antares". The entanglement of life's is another.

No doubt in a way several directors in this world have dealt with these very human aspects already. Only I haven't seen any other dealing with it in such genuineness like Spielmann - especially I haven't seen many other films from my country which managed to do that !

In a short: Authentic and real characters. Terrific writing and terrific acting. I especially enjoy the cynicism.All adds up to a real good austrian movie.

Antares is based on secrets and lies in the classic Austrian style, we know from directors Michael Haneke and Ulrich Seidl. Antares focuses on three women, whose paths cross in a building complex. A married nurse who has a lover that hardly speaks. The lover is only interested in sex and taking nude pictures of her. The sex and pictures are a tad explicit. The other is a young girl who is lying to her boyfriend that she is pregnant. The boyfriend is happy, but that does not stop him from sleeping with the third woman, a divorced woman who has problems getting rid of her ex-husband. The three destinies bond together in a refined way.

Antares is one fine example how the accomplished director Götz Spielmann could weave the delicate cobwebs of the intricacies of human emotions so beautifully on the screen. Spielmann possesses the distinct way of story-telling which doesn't require flamboyant camera-tricks or racy scenes to spice up his story. There the characters evolve slowly and steadily but give you opportunity to learn a thing or two about the complexity of human nature. In Antares, the story loosely follows the lives of three women, crossing one another's paths couple of times. One has a fine family and job yet indulges into passionate affair with a secret taciturn lover. Another desperately wants to get married with her boyfriend, but is very insecure about him. While the third one trying hard to get rid of her violent and abusive ex-husband who could yell at her, beat her but couldn't stop seeing her! But in all stories the core theme is passion and ambiguity of human nature. Here the characters are provided with two options of more, but it's never so simple to choose one of them! Antares tries to explore the complexities of relationships and hence the lives of variety of people trapped into their own emotional webs, the urban way of living has to offer! Antares is all about the unflinching passion and endless yearning inherent to human nature. the director manages to stitch the three parallel stories seamlessly and the characters are left echoing in viewer's mind for long after the movie is finished.