THEATRE REVIEW: ‘A Sentimental Journey’ with Doris Day

Posted on March 6, 2009 by admin

ELLIOTT FRANKSBy Ray Bennett

LONDON – Away from her bright and breezy film and television image, the often troubled life of singer and movie star Doris Day offers plenty of drama for a show and Adam Rolston’s “A Sentimental Journey” makes a creditable stab at it.

Presented as an informal tale related by Day’s son Terry Melcher and Day herself, the show takes the star from her earliest days in Cincinnati when a car-train wreck ended her ambitions to be a dancer to success as a big-band singer to her time as the number one movie star in the world.

Her several difficult marriages including one that left her broke, in debt and committed to doing record albums and a TV series she didn’t know about are also dealt with.

ELLIOTT FRANKSDotted along the way, although not in chronological order, are a couple dozen hit songs from the Doris Day songbook and thanks to a talented cast topped by Sally Hughes it makes for an entertaining evening.

First-time playwright Rolston is aided by having veteran TV director Alvin Rakoff (“A Dance To the Music of Time”, “A Voyage Round My Father”), a Canadian who has been based in the U.K. for most of his career, direct the piece.

The small stage at the Mill at Sonning, an acclaimed and always sold-out dinner theatre west of the U.K. capital, has to make room for a four-piece band so there’s not much space for the players to move around.

Still, Hughes and Ian McLarnon, who plays her son, along with Tom Wallers, Carol Ball and Glyn Kerslake, who play assorted roles ranging from Day’s mother and father to Frank Sinatra to Day’s notorious agent-husband Marty Melcher, make the best of it.

The acting is spot-on but it’s the singing that resonates. All the cast members have appealing voices but Hughes, who is also artistic director at the theatre, is often uncanny in replicating Day’s tone and phrasing.

Pretty, blonde and youthful enough to impersonate the star at all ages, Hughes really nails some of the more demanding songs such as Gordon & Warren’s “At Last,” Fain & Webster’s “Secret Love” and Styne & Cahn’s “It’s Magic.”

Whether or not the production will have a life beyond the Mill at Sonning remains to be seen. It would need some development, but given Day’s dramatic story and those wonderful songs, it wouldn’t come as a surprise.

Venue: The Mill at Sonning, UK, runs through April 19; Cast: Sally Hughes, Ian McLarnon, Tim Wallers, Carol Ball, Glyn Kerslake; Book: Adam Rolston; Director: Alvin Rakoff; Choreographer: Joseph Pitcher; Set designer: Eileen Diss; Lighting designer: Matthew Biss; Costume designer: Jane Kidd; Musical director: Jo Stewart.

This review appeared in The Hollywood Reporter.

Read more about the Mill at Sonning and an article by the show’s director, Alvin Rakoff

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THEATRE REVIEW: Peter Flannery’s ‘Burnt By the Sun’

Posted on March 6, 2009 by admin

burnt by the sun x650By Ray Bennett

LONDON – The Gulag comes to Chekhov in “Burnt By the Sun,” Peter Flannery’s absorbing stage adaptation of Nikita Mikhalkov’s 1995 foreign-language Oscar-winning film.

The story is set just before the Second World War as Russian dictator Joseph Stalin was unleashing his terrible purges in what became known as the Great Terror that caused forced migration, imprisonment and as many as two million deaths.

Ciaran Hinds stars as the former Bolshevik officer Kotov who clings to the belief that Stalin still intends to fulfil the goals of the revolution. He leads a lazy but comfortable life with young wife Maroussia (Michelle Dockery) and their daughter Nadia (played alternately by Skye Bennett and Holly Gibbs), and assorted members of her family enjoying country life and sunny days at the beach.

It’s very reminiscent of a Chekhov play until a surprise piano-playing visitor bursts in wearing long hair, a top hat and dark glasses to reveal himself as a young man named Dmitri Andreevich (Rory Kinnear, pictured with Dockery), who was once Marrousia’s lover.

Kotov is immediately suspicious and the motives of all three are thrown into question as the truth about Dmitri’s long-ago departure and Marrousia’s reaction to it are revealed along with Kotov’s role in his rival’s exile. Like the film, the play explores secrets and lies in relationships with the implications greater due to the horror of Stalin’s repression.

Veteran Hinds is imposing and grave as Kotov while Dockery, who was so good as Eliza Doolittle in “Pygmalion” at the Old Vic last year, conveys Marrousia’s confusion and vulnerability movingly. Kinnear is called upon to sing, dance and clown around and then reveal himself as a cold-blooded Soviet thug, and he does it all spectacularly well.

The play follows closely the film’s screenplay by Mikhalkov and Rustam Ibraginbekov with Vicki Mortimer’s handsome set recreating the film’s dacha and Christopher Shutt’s sound design featuring lots of rockets, tanks and airplanes trying to make up for the absence of the film’s excellent cinematography.

Venue: National Theatre, London, runs through May 21; Cast: Ciaran Hinds, Michelle Dockery, Rory Kinnear, Stephanie Jacob; Playwright: Peter Flannery, from the screenplay by Nikita Mikhalkov and Rustam Ibragimbekov; Director: Howard Davies; Set designer: Vicki Mortimer; Lighting designer: Mark Henderson; Sound designer: Christopher Shutt; Music: Ilona Sekacz.

This review appeared in The Hollywood Reporter. Photo by Catherine Ashmore.

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THEATRE REVIEW: Nicholas de Jongh’s ‘Plague Over England’

Posted on February 26, 2009 by admin

Plague Over England x650By Ray Bennett

LONDON – At a time when Sean Penn is honoured for playing a gay man who was slain, Nicholas de Jongh’s dull play “Plague Over England,” about how legendary British Shakespearean actor John Gielgud was embarrassed in the 1950s when he was fined for soliciting in a gent’s toilet, seems like very small beer.

The portentous title is taken from words spoken by the British home secretary at a time when homosexuality was illegal but the fuss over Gielgud’s conviction was largely a tabloid newspaper event.

The court fined him £10, the British theatergoing public greeted him with standing ovations and having won a Tony Award in 1948 as part of an ensemble, Gielgud went on to win two more plus a Grammy, an Emmy and in 1981 an Oscar as best supporting actor in the hit Dudley Moore comedy “Arthur.”

In the play, the sensitive actor is seen anguishing more over what the newspaper headlines will do to his career than demonstrating anger over the political climate that allowed him to be victimized.

Michael Feast (pictured) makes a fair stab at looking and sounding like the uniquely gifted performer but the playwright chooses not to go very deep into what makes him tick. There are some entertaining scenes in the theater with Gielgud rehearsing with another theatrical legend, Sybil Thorndike, played wittily by Celia Imrie (“Calendar Girls”).

De Jongh attempts to provide context with several subplots to show the petty and vindictive intolerance of the government even as gay men prospered within its ranks and among politician’s sons. But the dialogue is full of lame puns and double entendres, and scenes move in a blur from a Victorian public toilet, to backstage, to a very camp drinking club and on to Westminster.

One subplot torpedoes the play badly as it shows the young undercover policeman who entrapped Gielgud promptly being picked up by another young man. Later they tear each other’s clothes off lustily in a clumsily staged scene set against the minister preparing his hateful speech.

The way gay men were treated in Britain in those days was shameful and many suffered horrendous consequences but on this evidence for Gielgud it was just a mild inconvenience.

Venue: Duchess Theatre, London, runs through May 16; Cast: Michael Feast, Celia Imrie, David Burt, Simon Dutton; Playwright: Nicholas de Jongh; Director: Tamara Harvey; Set designer: Alex Marker; Costume designer: Trish Wilkinson;; Lighting designer: James Farncombe; Sound designer: Theo Holloway; Music: Alexander S. Bermange.

This review appeared in The Hollywood Reporter.

 

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BERLIN FILM REVIEW: Nicole Haeusser’s ‘Little Joe’

Posted on February 14, 2009 by admin

little joe x650By Ray Bennett

BERLIN – He became famous in the 1960s as Andy Warhol’s naked muse in several Paul Morrissey movies and he was immortalized in song by Lou Reed but, as Nicole Haeusser’s documentary “Little Joe” shows, the life of Joe Dallesandro (pictured) was more than a walk on the wild side.

He is almost short enough to be a racing jockey but as a young man, his chiselled features and muscular body — along with his obvious comfort at being nude on screen — made Dallesandro an object of lust for men and women. “Little Joe” is structured like a filmed autobiography and the man’s engaging frankness may take it beyond gay and art-house audiences and appeal to movie fans in general.

Dallesandro’s portrayal of a street hustler in the 1968 film “Flesh” established his image and it was cemented in Reed’s lyrics, “Little Joe never once gave it away. Everybody had to pay and pay.” But the actor says that described the character in the film, and was not true of him.

Still, he traded on it over several more Morrissey films for Warhol even though he speaks of them now as having little merit, calling “Lonesome Cowboys” (1968) “the silliest movie I have ever seen.” Of “Trash” (1970), he says, “We were pretending to be actors, that was the first jump.” The cast had to improvise the dialogue so Dallesandro says he decided to act being stoned so that he didn’t have to say anything.

He says he wasn’t really a part of the Warhol clique: “Yeah, they were interesting times, but I didn’t hang out. I didn’t go to the parties. We hardly said more than good morning and goodnight.” He also resented having his sexuality defined by others. “Why do you have to be gay or not? Why can’t I just be Little Joe?” he asks.

He had plenty of women in his life including his third wife Kim, whose daughter Vedra Mehagian Dallesandro is also a producer on the documentary.

After quitting the Warhol scene, he went to Europe and made a score of shoot-’em-ups over 10 years in Italy but none were released in the States. He went home and has carved out a useful career with small parts in films such as “The Cotton Club”, “The Limey” and “Sunset”, and TV shows including “Miami Vice,” “Matlock” and “Wiseguy”.

There are lots of clips and photos in the film with considerable nudity. Dallesandro speaks directly to the camera throughout, smoking constantly, telling of his films, marriages, drugs and drinking. No longer the handsome boy, he appears fit with a light and self-deprecating manner and the film could well help him land bigger roles in the future.

Venue: Berlin International Film Festival, Panorama Documentary; Director: Nicole Haeusser; Director of photography: Christos Moisides; Production designer: Elizabeth Cummings; Music: John Frusciante, Lou Reed; Editors: Karen Smalley, Nicole Haeusser; Producers: Vedra Mehagian Dallesandro, Joe Dallesandro, Christo Moisides, Nicole Haeusser; Executive producers: Vedra Mehagian Dallesandro, Joe Dallesandro Production company: Little Joe Prods; Sales: Little Joe Prods.; Not rated; running time, 87 minutes.

This review appeared in The Hollywood Reporter.

 

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John Hurt talks about returning to play Quentin Crisp

Posted on February 14, 2009 by admin

John Hurt Berlin 2009By Ray Bennett

BERLIN – British actor John Hurt told me that he is the straight actor who has played the greatest number of gay characters onscreen and he returns to the most famous one of them all, Quentin Crisp, in a new drama titled “An Englishman In New York”.

The film had its world premiere last month at the Berlin International Film Festival and it will screen at the London Lesbian and Gay Film Festival March 26 before it airs on and heads for DVD release.

It’s the role he played in “The Naked Civil Servant” in 1975 and it made a star of Crisp, who had written the memoir on which the film was based. It told of his flamboyant but persecuted life as a gay man in the days when homosexuality was illegal in Britain. One of many jobs he took after World War Two was a model for art classes in London. He wrote, “It was like being a civil servant except that you were naked.”

After being the subject of a short film, Crisp’s story caught the attention of Thames Television, which had the ITV franchise for London in those days, and made into a film directed by Jack Gold (“Escape From Sobibor”, the final “Inspector Morse”). Hurt won a BAFTA TV Award as best actor and the film gained considerable exposure on TV in the United States where the gay community embraced Crisp as an iconic figure.

quentin_10612c“An Englishman In New York” relates what happened when he immigrated to the US in 1981 aged 73 and persuaded immigration officials to grant him a green card on the basis that he was truly one of a kind.

Quickly gaining a slick agent (played in the film by Swoozie Kurtz), he launched a career as a raconteur with an off-Broadway one-man show and movie reviews in a Greenwich Village magazine. He lived in a small and squalid apartment — “Housework is a mistake,” he said — and became a fixture on what he called “the champagne and peanuts” circuit. Crisp’s spontaneous words of wit and wisdom made him a favourite in the gay community with regular appearances on radio and TV until one of his comments got him in trouble.‘

Speaking at a press conference in Berlin, Hurt said that he wasn’t sure he wanted to return to play a role that had been so successful: “I was somewhat reticent. When you’ve done something that had the impact it had, you want to protect it. Let sleeping dogs lie.”

With a script by Brian Fillis (“The Curse of Steptoe”) and director Richard Laxton (“Hancock & Joan”) on board, Hurt signed up: “When I read the script I thought it was an extraordinarily sensitive treatment of the last 20 years of his life. In a sense, I thought it would be wrong not to do it.”

Everyone agrees that Crisp was a cantankerous figure not always easy to get along with. The film deals at length with the hot water that one of his spontaneous quips got him into. “AIDS is just a fad,” he declared to a gay audience, which promptly turned on him. He declined to retract or explain the comment, was soon dropped by his agent and editor, and the performance offers dried up.

Director Laxton, who was also in Berlin, said, “You can get angry at him — he made a lot of strong, forthright statements and never backed down, but that was part of the personality, of who he was.”

Hurt said that the new film was not intended as a direct sequel to the first one: “We knew perfectly well that it would not have the same impact. That would have been ludicrous. It was a completely different time in history.”

There is redemption in Crisp’s story, however, brought about by his meeting a talented young artist who is dying of AIDS. With the help of loyal friends, the ageing icon gained a new audience before he died at 91.

Hurt said his long acquaintance with Crisp had also influenced his decision to revisit the role: “I do identify with Quentin, it’s been such a long time that I’ve known him … and he once said ‘Mr. Hurt is my representative on earth’, so I have a certain papal blessing.”

This story appeared in Cue Entertainment.

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BERLIN FILM REVIEW: Boris Khlebnikov’s ‘Help Gone Mad’

Posted on February 13, 2009 by admin

help gone mad x650By Ray Bennett

BERLIN – Russian director Boris Khlebnikov’s enigmatic urban saga “Help Gone Mad” is very Russian indeed with long slow scenes and the driest comedy involving two lost men who take on some resemblance to Don Quixote and Sancho Panza.

Unlikely to attract audiences beyond Russian borders, the film offers a clash of moods from whimsy to the terror of a police force without control. Uninteresting visually, what enjoyment there is comes from the performances of the two leads.

Evgeny Syty plays a slow-witted country bumpkin who travels into Moscow for a day’s work after which he is promptly mugged and left without money, ID or shoes. A deluded old man (Sergey Dreiden) takes him home, feeds him a broth of boiled bones and insists that he stay.

The old man embroils him in his daily missions to save Moscow’s rundown citizens from the horrors of urban decay and together they tilt, if not at windmills, then at birdhouses, trash bins and park benches.

The old guy’s daughter (Anna Mikhalkova) brings his medicine and supplies of food but he resists her attempts to take care of him while she treats his visitor with disdain. The cockeyed threesome’s fate is bound to intersect with a lazy but brutal local police captain but the film takes what must be a very Russian view of the consequences.

Venue: Berlin International Film Festival, Forum; Cast: Evgeny Syty, Sergey Dreiden, Anna Mikhalkova, Alexander Yatsenko; Director: Boris Khlebnikov; Screenwriter: Alexander Rodionov; Director of photography: Shandor Berkeshi; Editor: Ivan Lebedev;  Producer: Roman Borisevich; Production: Koktobel; Not rated; running time, 118 minutes.

This review appeared in The Hollywood Reporter.

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BERLIN FILM REVIEW: John Hurt in ‘An Englishman in New York’

Posted on February 12, 2009 by admin

quentin_10612cBy Ray Bennett

BERLIN – When John Hurt portrayed Quentin Crisp in the movie “The Naked Civil Servant” 33 years ago, it gave Crisp the stardom he’d always craved. Now Hurt is back in the same role in “An Englishman in New York,” which shows what happened when Crisp landed as a gay icon in Manhattan.

Made for U.K. TV, the film will air there on ITV1 this year but it will make the rounds of international festivals and probably show up on a US cable channel. It deserves to be seen for another of Hurt’s exquisitely observed performances in which he furthers his claim to be the straight actor who has played the highest number of gay roles.

Written by Brian Fillis and directed by Richard Laxton, the film shows Crisp in his 70s when, having survived life as a gay man in the days when homosexuality was illegal, he flees still intolerant England for New York where his eccentric flamboyance is welcomed and celebrated.

Feeling right at home, he wins a green card after convincing immigration officials that he is truly one of a kind and is picked up by a savvy agent played by Swoosie Kurtz. He launches a career as a raconteur in an off-Broadway one-man show and becomes a movie reviewer for a Christopher Street magazine run by Philip Steele (Denis O’Hare).

Taking a tiny and shabby apartment — “Housework is a mistake,” he says — he becomes a fixture on what he calls “the champagne and peanuts” circuit. Crisp’s spontaneous words of wit and wisdom earn him an high place in the gay community with regular appearances on radio and TV but then one of his comments gets him in trouble.

“AIDS is just a fad,” he declares, and his gay audience, now starting to really suffer from the epidemic, turns away from him. Declining to retract or explain his remark, Crisp is dropped by his agent and editor until his eyes are opened when he gets to know young artist Patrick Angus (Jonathan Tucker), who is dying of AIDS.

Rescued by performance artist Penny Arcade (Cynthia Nixon), who puts him back on stage, and with Steele proving a loyal friend, the iconic figure lives into his 10th decade and once again wins over the gay community.

Crisp’s writing and performances provide much of the dialogue as he fulfils his destiny in becoming a dispenser of aphorisms that are rendered by Hurt with immense poise and charm. The actor is too good, however, not to reveal some of the man’s doubts and loneliness in a fully rounded performance.

Venue: Berlin International Film Festival, Panorama; Cast: John Hurt, Denis O’Hare, Jonathan Tucker, Swoosie Kurtz, Cynthia Nixon; Director: Richard Laxton; Screenwriter: Brian Fillis; Director of photography: Yaron Orbach; Production designer: Beth Mickle; Music: Paul Englishby; Costume designer: Joey Attawia; Editor: Peter H. Oliver; Producer: Amanda Jenks; Executive producers: James Burstall, Joey Attawia, Susie Field Production: Leopardrama; Sales: Leopard International; Not rated; running time, 74 minutes.

This review appeared in The Hollywood Reporter.

 

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BERLIN FILM REVIEW: Simon Bitton’s documentary ‘Rachel’

Posted on February 12, 2009 by admin

Après la mort de Rachel Corrie, tuée par un bulldozer israélienBy Ray Bennett

BERLIN – The drive to keep alive the name of a young American woman who died beneath a U.S.-made bulldozer driven by an Israeli soldier in Palestine continues in Simone Bitton’s sober documentary “Rachel.”

The idealistic Rachel Corrie (pictured below) was one of a team of activists from the U.S. and the U.K. who lived with Palestinian families in the most dangerous areas of the Gaza Strip in 2003 in an attempt to ameliorate the actions of the Israeli military demolishing homes close to the exclusion wall it had erected there.

rachel x325She was the subject of “My Name is Rachel Corrie,” a very moving 2005 play put together by actor Alan Rickman and journalist Katherine Viner. Starring Megan Dodds, it played at the Royal Court and then in London’s West End before getting a New York run in 2006.

Bitton’s documentary, which presents a very serious and unemotional examination of the available facts, will gain attention at festivals and among concerned communities but is unlikely to drum up mainstream audiences.

It is an important document, however, as it contains testaments by the civilian witnesses who were there when Corrie was killed as well as the official statements of key Israeli military commanders and administrators.

Corrie died when she and her colleagues attempted to stop a giant Caterpillar D9 bulldozer from clearing homes and other buildings in an area near Rafah. The soldiers testified that she died in a regrettable incident. Her associates and Palestinian witnesses say the driver of the 65-ton armored vehicle killed her deliberately.

Questions are raised about the speed and nature of the initial investigation and the official decisions that followed. Activists from England, Scotland and the States tell of their own experiences in Palestine, claiming that danger was constant from Israeli bullets and bulldozers.

The film presents everything in a matter-of-fact way but there is one sequence that will stick with any viewer. It’s shot from in front of one of the slowly moving monstrous bulldozers that, with its immense blade blocking the light, leaves no doubt that it would kill anything in its path.

Venue: Berlin International Film Festival, Forum;; Director-screenwriter: Simone Bitton; Director of photography: Jacques Bouquin; Editors: Catherine Poitevin & Jean-Michel Perez; Producer: Thierry Lenouvel; Production: Cine-Sud Promotions, Arte France Cinema, Novak Prod, RTBF; Sales: UMedia; Not rated; running time, 100 minutes.

This review appeared in The Hollywood Reporter.

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BERLIN FILM REVIEW: Sally Potter’s ‘Rage’

Posted on February 9, 2009 by admin

rage x650By Ray Bennett

BERLIN – Sally Potter’s Berlin competition film “Rage” shows that no matter how shallow, pretentious, self-regarding and irrelevant the fashion industry might be, there will always be a filmmaker who is more so.

The British writer and director has taken a bad idea for a radio play and tarted it up with highly stylised video that is supposed to be the work of a kid using a mobile phone camera. She roped in some big names including Judi Dench, Steve Buscemi, Eddie Izzard and Jude Law (pictured) to play characters at an unseen New York fashion show.

Plastered with makeup, they speak directly to the camera against a green, blue or red screen in a monotony of drivel having to do with what the kid with the camera is too clueless to go see for himself.

This involves some kind of accident involving one of the models and a shooting, but that’s unclear, and there’s not the slightest reason to care. Boxoffice will be limited to members of the filmmaker’s family, if that.

Reality TV appears to have eaten Potter’s brain as she thinks that everyone, including those who design, produce, own, photograph and write about haute couture on catwalk day will rush to sit in a kind of “Big Brother” confessional seat and tell all.

She clearly believes that only a kid would know that images shot on a digital camera can be uploaded onto some kind of interweb computer thingy that others can look at. She suggests that this is news to the rag trade.

Given complete rubbish to say and with such witless direction, the actors contribute uniformly the worst performances of their careers. It would be instructive to know what transvestite Izzard, for example, thinks of Law’s insulting posturing as a painted, bewigged and drooling model named Minx.

Many years ago, Yoko Ono made a picture in which she had people of all ages and stripes take their pants off and walk on a treadmill while she trained a motion picture camera on their naked bottoms. The entire film was a series of buttocks in motion, and compared to Potter’s “Rage” it was an absolute masterpiece.

Venue: Berlin International Film Festival, Competition; Cast: Judi Dench, Steve Buscemi, Eddie Izzard, Jude Law, John Leguizamo, Dianne Wiest; Director: Sally Potter; Screenwriter: Sally Potter; Director of photography: Steven Fierbeg; Music: Sally Potter, Fred Frith; Costume designers: Marina Draghici, Es Devlin; Editor: Daniel Goddard; Producer: Christopher Sheppard; Executive producers: Bob Hiestand, Christina Weiss Lurie Production: Adventure Pictures, VOX3 Films; Sales: Six Sales; Not rated; running time, 99 minutes.

This review appeared in The Hollywood Reporter.

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BERLIN FILM REVIEW: Wolfgang Murmberger’s ‘The Bone Man’

Posted on February 9, 2009 by admin

bone man x650By Ray Bennett

BERLIN – Austrian comedian Josef Hader returns as lugubrious former police officer Simon Brenner in “The Bone Man,” the third of director Wolfgang Murmberger’s screen versions of the blackly comic crime novels by Wolf Haas.

Star, director and novelist combine on the screenplay just as they did on “Come Sweet Death” (2000) and “Silentium!” (2005), and Simon Schwartz returns as Brenner’s fusspot boss Berti, who kicks off a bizarre tale of blackmail, murder and cannibalism by sending the doleful ex-cop into the countryside to repossess a car.

Full of eccentric characters, strange twists and dead bodies, “The Bone Man” has a cheerfully twisted sense of humor and considerable tension as the head of a very odd family resorts to murder to get himself out a of a jam. Ranking with the noir thrillers of the early Coen Bros., the film’s boxoffice prospects are lively.

When Brenner is dispatched into the snowy hinterland to reclaim a yellow Beetle from a man named Horvath who is late with payments, he has no idea what he’s walking into. He tracks the man to the Loschenkohl Inn where he gets the cold shoulder from owner (Josef Bierbichler), his daughter-in-law Birgit (Birgit Minichmayr) and a waitress named Alex (Pia Hierzegger).

Deciding that Horvath has some connection to the inn, the mournful and reluctant repo man digs about unaware of the murderous drama going on around him. This involves Loschenkohl and a blackmailing pimp named Eugenev (Stipe Erceg) from Bratislava with the hotel owner’s layabout son Pauli (Christoph Luser), who is married to Birgit, determined to wreck his father’s plans to marry his young girlfriend (Edita Malovcic).

The growing intrigue and tension are underscored by what goes on in the basement of the inn where Loschenkohl has a machine with a lot of blades that renders leftovers from the restaurant — mostly the house specialty, chicken — that is sent in buckets to a nearby chicken farm.

The gruesome images of decimated and crushed bones add colorful counterpoint to the mayhem that takes place involving guns, car crashes, meat hooks and cleavers. But it’s all done with great flare and droll optimism despite the nefarious goings on and the unlikely romance of Brenner and Birgit is handled very deftly.

Venue: Berlin International Film Festival, Panorama; Cast: Josef Hader, Josef Bierbichler, Birgit Minichmayr, Christoph Luser, Simon Schwartz; Director: Wolfgang Murnberger; Screenwriters: Josef Hader, Wolfgang Murnberger, Wolf Haas; Director photography: Peter von Haller; Production designers: Andreas Donhauser, Renate Martin; Music: Sofa Surfers; Costume designer: Martina List; Editor: Evi Romen; Producers: Danny Krausz, Kurt Stocker; Production: Dor Film; Sales: Atrix Film; Not rated, running time, 121 minutes.

This review appeared in The Hollywood Reporter.

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