Rimini review-Ulrich Seidl's lounge singer is so terrible, he can be brilliant

W Würgerry, Sadness and confrontative Groteske once again combine by Ulrich Seidl, although he has almost- But not quite - as the common human sympathy is acidified. When you have seen Seidl's other films, you know what to expect and you know how to prepare yourself for the horror. Perhaps this Seidl's creative career does not lead much further into the (or away from) downfall, but it is led with an unshakable conviction, an enormous compositional flair and an astonishing feeling for discovering extraordinary places.

The Italian coastal town of Rimini is an uncanny, melancholic place in winter; Seidl shows it in ice -cold fog and real snow. Refugees crowded on the street, and some groups of German and Austrian tourists make package tours in the kitschest hotels at reasonable prices at low -season prices. Here Ritchie Bravo, played by Seidl master guest Michael Thomas, follows his gloomy business. He is an aging lounge singer with an alcohol problem, a cheerful, sleepy style, an anti-Islam setting, a bleached blonde 80s vintage hairstyle and a wide belly. Ritchie deserves his livelihood to sing about his enthusiastic female senior fan base, which appears at their trainer parties to see his show. (You could compare him with Nick Apollo Forte in Woody Allen Broadway Danny Rose or Gerard Dépardieu in Xavier Giannolis The Singer-much, much more terribly.) He also increases his income by having sex with some of the fans for money-really cruel scenes in an unforgettable Seidl style.

But Ritchie is in a personal crisis. He has to go home to Austria when his mother dies and he is reunited with his brother Ewald (Georg Friedrich). His father Ekkehardt (played by Hans-Michael Rehberg, who died in 2017 shortly after the filming of his scenes) suffers from dementia and does not understand that his wife is dead. This lonely, battered figure is awarded the last desolates moments of the film. But the most traumatic is Ritchie back in Rimini with the long -alienated adult daughter Tessa (Tessa divine), who angrily demands money from him as compensation for how he left her and her mother years ago. Crossed by feelings of guilt and electrified by family feelings after the funeral, Ritchie sets off to get Tessa her money - which means to embezzle the money from the bank account of his confused father and to film his sex sessions with his tourist customers for blackmail.

It doesn't end well. You hardly need to say that. His reunion with Tessa is said to be the instrument of his grueling punishment: he is guilty and deserves everything that comes to him, except that in Seidl's world you get the feeling that terrible things would happen to him, even if or especially if he did it. I don't behave badly. There is agony for everyone, including the audience. There is a kind of brilliance in it.

rimini was shown at the Berlin Film Festival