The pitch is promising: A outsider breaking in to cinema criticism. And breaking in from a tiny little village in the mountains. And not a particularly nice or admirable outsider but one without creativity, without charm, but with only ambition: The outsider forcing his way into the arts world is a fraud. A "Sweet Smell of Success" of the art critic world, and out in the sticks instead of in the big city.
It goes wrong fundamentally because the film feels exactly like the subject it's trying to examine. It has all the ticks of a piece without insight into, or distance from, it's subject. And you walk out of the cinema thinking "Wow that guy Baier got a lucky break somewhere, did he seduce the studio boss's wife maybe ?" The key in the film, which is undoubtedly meant to be post-modern and clever in all sorts of superficially meaningless ways: "I have nothing to say", the protagonist says. "Neither have I, Now shall we go ?" the successful newswoman and sex-interest says.
Secondly the dialogue is downright terrible: Some of the supposedly quick witted repartee falls to the ground with a leaden clunk. The nominally revealing scenes have all the subtlety of a brick. The nasty scenes hinting at a broken relationship veering close to physical abuse. The wooden scene referring to "Renart" (fox) the medieval tale. That's because the guy studied medieval literature and runs over a fox in the snow. This loudly advertises some deep personal frustration in the protagonist in mystical terms. Which unfortunately makes this viewer want to scream.
But it manages two points: One for the nice landscape photography (the interiors were exaggeratedly staged). One for the storyline (it might have worked). And nearly one for the female lead.
I write all this because I was actually really looking forwards to this. I started toying with the idea of walking out half way through but stayed the course with gritted teeth.
There is one little curiosity: The guy seems to admire "Stranger than Paradise". That's as far away this ambitious pretension as you get. So there's hope yet, but I'm not holding my breath on this one.
