Slumming

I recently saw this at the 2007 Palm Springs International Film Festival. Suppose your life and surroundings are changed and it affects how you see and want to change your life? Two of the films characters find this out. One on an unwitting journey to the Czech border and another on a journey to Jakarta, Indonesia. Sebastian (August Diehl) is a 20-something yuppie from a wealthy family in Vienna who enjoys discovering the seediest bars in Vienna and rating them along with his friend Alex (Michael Ostrowski) who also enjoys meeting women on the internet and taking up skirt pictures with his cell phone. Kallman (Paulus Manker) is a down and out poet and intellectual who has fallen into an alcoholic binge and is selling poems on the street and stealing for drinking money. Passed out on a park bench he is picked up and dropped off at a Czech border town by Sebastian and his reluctant partner Alex. Pia (Pia Hierzegger) who is a school teacher and Sebastian's latest girlfriend learns of what they did and sets out with one of Kallman's lady friend drinking buddies (Maria Bill) to bring Kallman back to Vienna. This is a black comedy and a drama about redemption with a fine performance from Manker as the central character. Director/writer Michael Glawogger directs in a story he co wrote with Barbara Albert who is also a writer/director. It's worth a look and I would give it a 7.0 out of 10.

Sebastian is a snotty-rich thirty-something in Vienna. He, with the help of an enlisted comrade and roommate, Alex, wanders around the city in his Lexus, stirring up trouble. Most evenings are meetings with ladies from the Internet dating sites, with Sebastian setting them up like ducks at an arcade, only to shoot them down. One night, he and Alex come upon a passed-out drunken poet, sleeping on a bench in front of the train station. Always out for a lark, where there are no rules, Sebastian decides to put the man in his car's trunk and drive him across the border into the Czech Republic. There, he and Alex leave the unfortunate gentleman on a bench in front of the much smaller train station. What fun it is, to imagine the startled man when he awakes from his boozed-up state, in a country not his own! Sebastian has also met Pia, a pretty young teacher, and seems somewhat smitten and vice versa. That is, until he spills the beans about his little "joke" on the poor poet. Suddenly, everything is in turmoil. What lessons will be learned by each player in this little drama? This is a sharp look at the modern existence, in the richest societies, between the haves and the have-nots. Sebastian is so rich and yet so despicable in his misuse of his wealthy circumstances, a la Paris Hilton and clones. Pia is the model of the working middle class and the poet is down on life's bottom shelf. All of the actors do an amazingly nice job in their respective roles. The scenery is to die for, as most of us will never hop-skip to Austria or the Czech border. The costumes, production and direction are very fine, also, resulting in little scenes that make big impacts. Just watch Pia and her class twirl around the room in bird beaks and wings or see the poet come face to face with a little fawn and you will be enchanted. By no means will you be slumming, if you select this foreign film for an evening of diversion. It has a diverting story and some powerful messages to ponder upon, long after one pushes the rewind button.

Two guys with too much time and too much money on their hands pass their time by pulling pranks on people. It all starts fairly innocent, but eventually it goes worse and then from worse to evil. And of course, at that point everything comes down on them at once.

Slumming is a slow film that grows on you. At first it is hard not to chuckle at the pranks they play, but eventually it is hard not to dislike the two. It is also a film with more than one story line and one that plays those out rather well. The stories do have a clear common ground and where and when they connect they do it right.

As the film rolls on the characters all go through their changes - some small, some life changing. And all changes are understandable and believable.

The scenery is partly Vienna/Austria, partly some small city in the Tjech republic. The mixture of the two is nice - because of the great differences between the two.

So, all in all, it works out pretty well. It reminded me a lot of films like Funny Games (1997, Michael Haneke), and it really wasn't half bad. Still misses out on a few things, although I've got trouble putting a clear finger on what exactly is missing.

7 out of 10 young adults with rotten attitudes.

Slumming is great at first just because it has a premise you have not seen in a hundred other films. Its about a jerky young guy who bored with his life plays practical jokes on people (usually involving arranged blind dates made online and secretly taken crotch shots with his phone) One night while going around with his friend he sees a passed out drunk guy lying on a bench in front of a train station. He randomly decides to take said passed out drunk guy, put him in the trunk of his car, and drive him across the border into another country at a similar looking bench in front of a similar looking train station. (The jerky young guy keeps laughingly repeating-- "He'll think the train station shrank!" while driving back home with his friend) The rest of the movie mostly involves two different plot lines--one involving the passed out drunk guy coming to and trying to wander home, or at least wander somewhere in search of warmth and more alcohol. The second plot line involves the jerky young guy and his new relationship with this woman he meets on one of his arranged blind dates who seems to understand his penchant for playing pranks and trying to wake himself up so he's not simply sleeping through his life. (or something like that) Unfortunately as amused as she is by most of the stuff he does--she does not find the thought of what he did to the passed out drunk guy very funny at all and sets out to find him and bring him back. Why? I'm not too sure, but I suppose it gives the film something to give the audience someone to relate to because we're probably not going be able to relate to either of the other two guys at the center of the film (though I should admit I did kind of like the jerky young guy.) The first half hour or so is really very intriguing. I liked the central premise very, very much that I was willing to go with the film wherever it went. That intrigue actually takes the movie far enough--you spend a good majority of the movie wondering just where this film is actually going. Unfortunately it eventually becomes clear that the film isn't really going to go anywhere all that interesting. (in fact the movie essentially ends with an ending that's kind of the equivalent of shrugging your shoulders--I mean its an ending in the sense that the three characters get a resolution, but the resolution is more up in the air than concrete.) Also as much as I liked this fact--truthfully you're probably not going to be able to identify with either the jerky young guy, or the passed out drunk guy who while realistically portrayed is hard to evoke sympathy for given that he clearly doesn't want any.(basically once he wakes up, he marches around seeking shelter which he eventually finds, then he roams around again eventually hiding out in both a barn alongside some cows, and hiding out in the luggage compartment of a professional sports team's bus...I should add that throughout the movie he essentially berates the majority of people he ends up coming across. I mean he's nice enough to the kind souls who try to help him a little but but for the most part he's belligerent, angry, and almost always cursing in the only somewhat coherent ways that the drunk homeless sometimes do.) The film is good in that it doesn't ask for any sympathy for any of its characters (both of whom take life on their own terms) Its also good in that you really don't know where its going to go as the film keeps going along. However as interesting as it is, after a while it starts to become a little bit of a drag in that its hard to really connect with either of its two main characters (which is probably why they brought in the woman to search for the drunk guy--as an audience surrogate) So interesting and definitely worth a look for fans of the off-beat but not super terrific.

The movie is excellent because it has a great direction, a genius screenplay and Paulus Manker as the homeless "Kallmann".

The other actors are good as well - and, what is very important, very natural and credible (some street scenes were filmed with real pedestrians) - but without Paulus Manker, who could be believed as a real homeless, because he liked his role that much (as i just mentioned, in some street scenes he is the only actor beside unsuspecting pedestrians who he shouts at), what we can see and enjoy when watching the movie - the film would miss its heart.

The direction and the screenplay work optimal. The film is not boring at any moment, but it is also not overloaded. The film scores also with spontaneous jokes and punchlines. Very funny scenes happen at the farm in the Czech Republic (and not only at the farm - the whole part of the movie in Czech Republic is very funny, because "Kollmann" speaks no czech, and the czechs don't speak German), where the farmer and his family wonder why austrians suddenly emigrate to the czech republic (in history it has always been the other direction).

One of the best and ambitious austrian movies of the last years - at least of this year.

Its a movie for the critics and the audience as well - thats what it makes a very special work.