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Bonus Review #12
Film: Slumming [NR] 100 minutes
WIP™ Scale: $6
Where Viewed: Broadway Performance Hall, Seattle, WA
[2006 Seattle International Film Festival]
When 1st Seen: 27 May 2006
Time: 6:15 p.m.
Slumming—rich, bad boys who think a great time is using their powers of wit and inductive reasoning to ferret-out the nature of the people they observe as they gallivant around town pretending to be interested in women they've met in chat rooms and invited on blind dates so they can secretly capture inappropriate cell phone camera shots of them under the table in some of the seedy, Viennese bars where they then meet them. The ring-leader of the slummers, a duo of Austrians, is Sebastian (August Diehl). Clearly, his moral compass is spinning wildly out of control when he convinces his partner in crime, Alex (Michael Ostrowski) to help him play the ultimate slummer's prank on a homeless drunken poet they find on a park bench by moving him to a bench in front of the train station just across the border in the Czech Republic. And this, just after he might have found his soul mate in a young school teacher who seems to find herself able to overlook most of his hi-jinx until she learns of his finest achievement and the fate of the poor poet.
"...this film is not a great way to spend an already depressing, grey, rainy, trite, Seattle Saturday afternoon..."Thus is the main substance of this Austrian/Swiss production called Slumming and directed by Michael Glawogger. While the acting is quite good, the story, well, it was a little too difficult for me to follow. Which is the diplomatic way of saying, "I just didn't like it." I didn't really care for any of the characters. The drunken poet character reminded me of Rupert from Survivor—he steals anything he wants, does anything he wants, to anyone he wants, acts superior to everyone else, and I was glad that someone finally got rid of him. Unfortunately, they didn't deport him far enough away as he manages to worm his way back to Vienna by stowing away on the Viennese Number One Football bus. Meanwhile, Sebastian and Alex are mostly terrible people. Their entire cell phone photo scam is just repugnant. I was furious that they never really get their comeuppance. Then there is this Transcendtal trip to the Far East that Sebastian takes when one of his hook ups suggests the best way to clear his conscience (which implies he has one in the first place) would be to travel. Surely when he returns all things bad will be gone, and his soul won't still have a big "Kick Me, I'm going to Hell Anyway" sign hung around its neck. I could not for the life me figure out what the point of that trip was. Granted, the film might have lost something in translation. I'm not sure. I can only read the subtitles and pay attention to the actors' actions so fast. If that is the case, I apologize. Otherwise, I don't know how else to put it other than to say this film is not a great way to spend an already depressing, grey, rainy, trite, Seattle Saturday afternoon. With the Seattle International Film Festival going on, there have to be 100s of other more worthwhile films to see.
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