Living safely in a quiet little German town, Karsten (Sebastian Hülk) encounters the mysterious Anna after a party in his apartment and feels a strange attraction to the young woman. However, a moment of weakness and the power of chance suddenly turn Karsten’s well-ordered life upside down and he loses control, with dangerous consequences. Finding himself in the dock, Karsten sees his family relationships and network of friends begin to unravel. Disappointment fuels his anger, and there is no going back to how things were.
The Berlin-based writer-director Aslı Özge begins her third feature film with a quote from Shakespeare’s Hamlet: “There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so,” and, like the Danish prince’s further musings, Özge shifts it into a study on one expansive prison. Karsten’s guilt-ridden ordeal also evokes Dostoyevsky’s worlds and, above all, the cunningly oppressive and ever-changing atmosphere of Claude Chabrol’s best crime films.
The skilfully composed interplay between the polished visual expression and a soundscape that perforates the subconscious pushes the viewer to the brink of angst, to confront the age-old questions of morality and guilt, justice and hypocrisy. This tormentingly forward-leaning thriller masterfully commands the conventions of its genre.
Lauri Timonen