Follow me: Berlin-review

Mutilated, semi-experimental drama of the family needed dysfunction significantly reduce.

Johannes Hammel

Simon young, Roland Hunter, Daniela Holtz, Charlotte Ullrich

BERLIN - the latest figure of Tolstoy's maxim that each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way, follow me is a hard going jump in intergenerational woe, not to mention a mixture of experimental and narrative elements, mainly shot on the black and white digital video, transferred then to 35 mm. The film intrigue but eventually exasperates. Limited Festival exposure beckons for what a rather late is segue of shorts feature-length work for 47-year-old of Swiss born author/Director/editor/producer/co-cinematographer John Hammel.

As that indicates the multiplicity of roles, follow me a very personal project and an act of personal, perhaps too autobiographical is obviously expression for mutton. As often happens when filmmaker edit their own material, which is results a closed circuit of associations and meanings, which are likely to the auteur remain frustratingly difficult for everyone, but tangible. Mutton has gone so far as, in extracts from 8 mm home movies shot during his own childhood, though connection between them and which remains fictitious events, which include the main plot, oblique and perhaps even counterproductive to mix.

The Central story strands are confusing enough on their own with two actresses, only plays the lead role of unpredictable housewife Mrs Blumenthal identified as: Daniela Holtz pleased to drift the majority of screen time with the older Charlotte Ullrich a and as their mysterious alter ego. Graveland and perhaps manic-depressive is Mrs Blumenthal to help get out of the running-time pad drive into a small riverside apartment in an unidentified Northern German port city with documentary style footage of port.

Bespectacled, surly is Mr. Blumenthal (Roland Hunter), if at all, even more volatile as his wife, anger-management problems and apparently not with the load by raising his two young boys to meet Pius (Simon Jung) and Roman (Karl Fischer). Although sometimes naughty, Pius seems remarkably well adapted in particular background - be with his family and thanks in the face of tough times in the school to studies teacher Mr. Denoth religious (Oskar Fischer experience). The latter is a sadistic, punishment-oriented Martinet obsessive fixed the trivial matter of transition from part 1 of a specific life Jesus textbook (with the title of follow me!) on the part of two.

This school sequences unfold with a cool, blackly funny science that traumatized childhood carries echoes of Michael Haneke and his studies. Elsewhere Hammel repeated focus with enlarged sequences of aberrant, crazy behaviour on the part of adults, perhaps to show, how Moody and strange adults lose can when seen from juvenile perspectives. As a whole is difficult to measure it, exactly which points to put over in a diffuse film that often to look at, thanks to his photographer's eye for visual compositions (particularly in those in the outdoor scenes) is notable, but that is repetitive Hammel tries in the second half.

Venue: International Film Festival Berlin (Forum)
Production company:'s film
Starring: Daniela Holtz, Simon young, Roland Hunter, Charlotte Ullrich, Karl Fischer, Oskar Fischer
Director/screenwriter/producer/Editor: Johannes Hammel
Directors of photography: John Hammel, Jörg Burger
Production designer: Andrea Schratzberger
Music: Heinz Ditsch
Costume designer: Alfred Mayerhofer
Sales:'s film, Vienna
No review, 109 minutes