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Scene from »X«: Actually, they only wanted to shoot amateur porn in the provinces - but everything turns out very differently
Photo: Christopher Moss / Capelight Pictures
In cinemas from May 19:
»X«
You can already imagine how US filmmakers
Ti West to pitch for his comeback film has formulated: It is a slasher, but it's also a porn!
Fair enough, somewhere the money must come from somewhere.
But it would be too easy, "X" to dismiss as pure exploitation.
West, who hired himself in recent years rather than director for individual episodes of different series, has made the end of the noughties smart retro horror movies such as "The House of the Devil," a name that he had expected more than the x- te generic remake of "Texas Chainsaw Massacre".
At first, however, all signs seem to point to homage.
Six young hipsters from Houston get into a Dodge van (with the amusingly ambiguous sign "Plowing Service") and drive to the Texas countryside, tele-evangelist country, in order to shoot amateur porn there of all places, and an artistic one at that.
The setting is the farmhouse of a very old and rickety hillbilly couple who have no idea what excesses are going to take place on their property.
As a horror fan, one suspects that this will end in fountains of blood and gaping wounds.
And West doesn't hide the ending of his story at all: He lets the helpless county sheriffs trudge over the corpses and horrors at his crime scene at the beginning, before he tells what happened 24 hours before.
Set in 1979, X is of course a deep nod to Tobe Hooper's Chainsaw classic, Paul Schrader's Hardcore, Kubrick's The Shining and other seminal films of the time, West even adapting the pacing, editing and aesthetics of the pre-digital era and creates an exciting, self-deprecating slow-burner in which Mia Goth (»Suspiria«) shines as the new scream queen and rap star Kid Cudi as a sensitive sex god with a huge penis.
The sex scenes are rather tame, the gore factor is low, but set to great effect.
The surprising and actually deeply disturbing kick of this film that seems so yesterday's lies in its very modern twist, telling the long-serving horror film parable of suppressed female sexuality in a completely different way.
Andrew Borcholte
"X".
USA 2022. Written and directed by Ti West.
With: Mia Goth, Kid Cudi, Jenna Ortega, Brittany Snow, Owen Campbell.
105 minutes.
»Leander Haussmann's Stasi Comedy«
"The hatchet is only buried when no one knows where it is," says a character in Leander Haussmann's "Stasi Comedy."
The war that the quote is about is not real, but only a paraphrase for the dispute over how the secret police of the GDR should be evaluated 33 years after the fall of the Wall.
If you still have a few coordinates in your head where the metaphorical hatchet could be buried, i.e. if you have a strong opinion of the Stasi and its employees, Haussmann now wants to take the last bit of orientation away from you.
Everything about the »Stasikomödie«, a cinema adaptation of his own play, is deliberately kept vague.
There is a main character in the aspiring writer Ludger, but no hero.
Recruited by the Stasi in 1989, Ludger (David Kross) infiltrates the artist and dissident scene in Prenzlauer Berg.
To cover up an unsuccessful mission, he sleeps with the first target, Corinna (Antonia Bill), but falls in love with the second, Nathalie (Deleila Piasko).
For whom he feels something, how much he deceives himself and the women, how perfidious or stupid the Stasi is in infiltrating the scene: with Haussmann everything is a bit funny, sometimes bizarre and sometimes melancholic.
Nothing is weighty, but that is precisely what makes the film so radically forgiving: Haussmann leaves the big questions of guilt and atonement behind.
At the end of the film, which takes place in the present, a new life literally begins as a baby is born.
It will probably never know what a hatchet even is.
Hannah Pilarczyk
»Leander Haussmann's Stasi Comedy«.
Germany 2022. Written and directed by Leander Haussmann.
With: David Kross, Antonia Bill, Deleila Piasko, Jörg Schuettauf, Henry Hübchen.
115 minutes.
In streaming:
»The Ice Diver« (Netflix)
Breathe in.
Exhale.
And then do not breathe very long.
As with certain yoga exercises that only in extreme cold.
Finnish diver Johanna Nordblad swims under solid sheets of ice several centimeters thick.
The short documentary accompanies her as she attempts a world record, and the beauty of it is that the film feels like a gentle meditation, not a jubilant aria in the triumph of human willpower over the elements.
Nordblad says she feels safe and relaxed underwater, and that it's not about enduring danger.
It's still exciting to watch the world record attempt, although filmmaker Ian Derry keeps it to a slow pace and captures the beauty of ice, water and weightlessness with his camera.
Breathe in.
Exhale.
submerge.
Oliver Kaever
»Hold Your Breath: The Ice Dive«.
GB/FIN 2022. Directed by Ian Derry.
With Johanna Nordblad.
40 minutes.
