A 1997 TV film. Two descriptions:

“Main character of this movie is Rene Rupnik, a former math teacher. He is forty years old and lives together with his mother in a desolate block of flats. Ever since his early youth women with big breasts have fascinated him, because they symbolise a kind of earth mother to him. He has never had an especially close relationship with his own mother; she was too ‘bony’ for him. Object of Rene’s fantasy is the actress Senta Berger, to him everything a woman should be. Standing by the blackboard and explaining the mathematical laws of sine and cosine (‘sinus’ is bosom in Latin), Rene sings the praises of the female curves and those of Santa Berger in particular. Filmmaker Ulrich Seidl let the former teacher speak freely about his obsessions and desires, intercutting his monologues with scenes from the protagonist’s day-to-day life.”

And…

“Rene Rupnik is a math teacher; Senta Berger is an actress (b. 1941). For the teacher, the curves of geometry evoke only woman’s breasts, especially the breasts of the actress. He watches her films over and over, for several years he has been examining and describing her body. He tries to transform it into geometry, to give it the validity of a mathematical fact. He considers himself an expert on breasts; his obsession leads to obscure theories about an ideal bra or the shaping of perfect breasts. The actress represents the unbeatable ideal. She fascinated him when he was young; today she is his perfect sinusoid. Rupnik does not need her physical presence, she probably does not attract him as a sexual fantasy, she is not an image for masturbation. She exists only in theory; she elevates his spirits of a mathematician.

In reality, he had to leave school and he lives on welfare together with his mother – he shares apartment with her, but he avoids her – they do not talk nor eat together. He is forty years old and unable of having a normal life. The world has shrunk into an old apartment filled with old newspaper and a strange, ugly relationship – he hates his mother, she is too flat and bony, so different from the picture of the actor that does not age.

At first sight, the film shot on the large format of Animal Love is less ambitious, it focuses on a single character, it softens the tense and intimate moments (the film does not wait for the audience to look away). The method of standard television documents does not open polemics about the intended and unintended, about the internal mechanics of the authentic. There’s an absence of opulent cynicism and coldness, the images from the apartment evoke mainly anxiety. It is an exercise in directing, a television comedy with a puppet affected by a bizarre obsession and the Oedipus Complex. This seems to be a time out, but also a next chapter of Seidl’s pubic anthropology.”

426MB | 1:00:15 | 741×556 | mkv

https://nitro.download/view/4C1F4E825DD8FCC/Der.Busenfreund.1997.DVDRip.DD2.0.x264-KG.mkv

Language:German
Subtitles:English softsub

The post Ulrich Seidl – Der Busenfreund AKA The Bosom Friend (1997) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

Synopsis:
Anna Maria, a single woman in her 50s, devotes her summer vacation to doing missionary work, so that Austria may be brought back to the path of virtue. On her daily pilgrimage through Vienna, she goes from door to door, carrying a foot-high statue of the Virgin Mary. When her husband, an Egyptian Muslim confined to a wheelchair, comes home after years of absence, her life is turned upside down.

Review:
The second installment of the Paradise Trilogy by Austrian provocateur Ulrich Seidl, Paradise: Faith premiered at the Venice Film Fest last year (Love at Cannes 2012 and Hope at the Berlinale 2013). It is by far the strongest and most affecting effort among the three.

Paradise: Faith tells a story of Annamaria (played with an uninhibited gusto by Maria Hofstätter), last seen in Paradise: Hope, helping her sister Teresa (Margarete Tiesel) prepare for her vacation to Kenya. She is a Catholic whose devotion verges on fanaticism. Like her sister, Annamaria is taking the summer off. But instead of going on a third-world sex tour, she is staycationing: taking a break from her job at a medical lab so she can devote herself to door-to-door missionary work. She is seen flagellating herself in front of a giant cross, atoning for everyone’s carnal sins in her immaculately kept, sterile house. She is also seen hobbling around on her knees from room to room, wearing a metal cilice around her waist while praying. If that’s not too crazy, she sweet-talks to the portrait of Jesus on her bedside table. It is quite apparent that her love for Christ is something more than spiritual: she even takes the cross to her bed.

Given Seidl’s reputation for depicting an unflattering side of humanity, one should expect that any new film by him would be an uncomfortable ride. But with Faith, Seidl seems to be pushing the envelope a little further, making the film a borderline absurdist comedy. Among the trilogy, Faith is definitely the most laborious one in terms of a plot development. But it doesn’t diminish its greatness one bit.

Annamaria, with her hair in a tight bun, is almost cartoonish, typifying a general image of what ‘the church lady’ looks like. Why does she think the world is such a sick, ugly place? Seidl answers this question with her stumbling upon an outdoor orgy: the sight is uglier and more graphic than the one in Dog Days. Annamaria, horrified but frozen, watches it for a long time before she turns away. Then, more of self-flagellation. She believes that god is testing her. But lately, these tests seem to be more frequent.

As we wonder about just what made her the way she is, her estranged paraplegic Muslim husband Nabil (Nabil Saleh, a non-actor in his first role) shows up in her life again after two years absence. I mean, this premise could easily be the next TLC reality TV show: Sweet Jesus, I’m Living with My Paraplegic Muslim Husband. Actually, it’s a real life story based on one of the participants in Seidl’s documentary, Jesus, You Know. We learn that his current invalid state is the result of his drinking problem (automobile accident). And Annamaria took it as a sign of her sinful life, hence her fanatic devotion to Christianity. He is back now, fully expecting to continue their lawful matrimony. Things soon turn sour. It’s a vicious physical battle as well as a spiritual one. This is all too much for Annamaria. Something’s gotta give!

In line with ‘the Seidl method,’ Faith has actors and non-actors alike improvising scenes without a script, shooting in real locations and in chronological order. And the result is a truly authentic experience. In Faith, when its all said and done, despite its many ridiculous, over the top situations, we can still take away witnessing some of the most miraculously uninhibited performances. There are some really tough physical scenes as Annamaria violently wrestles with her unwilling convertees and has a tit-a-tat swatting match with Nabil. These long takes are hilarious and fascinating, yet one can feel the real physical danger. For the fact that Seidl manages to make these normal people bare their body and soul in front of camera so naturally, transforming themselves into little Brandos before your eyes is quite astounding. The trust that these performers have in him must be enormous.

In the end, as Annamaria struggles with her faith, one feels overwhelming empathy for her. There is definitely a method in Seidl’s madness and behind all his antics and ugliness, there is a wealth of humanism. Paradise: Faith is definitely one of the truly great films I’ve seen this year so far.
— Dustin Chang (ScreenAnarchy)

Paradise - Faith (2012) -- Ulrich Seidl.mkv

General
Container:  	Matroska
Runtime: 	1h 53mn
Size: 	3.05 GiB
Video
Codec: 	x264
Resolution: 	1024x554 
Aspect ratio:  	1.85:1
Frame rate: 	23.976 fps
Bit rate: 	3 400 Kbps
BPP: 	0.250
Audio
#1:  	German 5.1ch AC-3 @ 448 Kbps

https://nitro.download/view/5DE0FA0AE19259A/Paradise_-_Faith_(2012)_–_Ulrich_Seidl.mkv

Language(s):German
Subtitles:English, Spanish (muxed)

The post Ulrich Seidl – Paradies: Glaube AKA Paradise: Faith (2012) first appeared on Cinema of the World.