“Import Export” plays dirty on both sides of equation
by admin on May.27, 2007, under Export Import
CANNES, France (Hollywood Reporter) – Ulrich Seidl’s “Import Export” is a tawdry little film ostensibly about the cultural clashes resulting from the proximity of former Soviet states like the Ukraine to Western nations like Austria. There is a film to be made on the topic, but this isn’t it.
With an aimless script inadequately filmed, the picture is unlikely to make it much farther than its inexplicable inclusion in the Cannes Film Festival’s competition.
As the title suggests, there are twin stories in the film, with a Ukrainian nurse seeking unskilled employment in Austria while a pair of witless Austrian yobs end up in the Ukraine trying to sell an outdated gumball machine.
If Sheriff Bell was upset with the state of Texas in the new Coen brothers film, he should see the lazy decadence in parts of Europe as depicted by Seidl. The film’s blurb says he used real nursing-home patients and sex workers in the scenes that dominate the film, and if that’s true, then the film is guilty of gross exploitation.
The nurse (Ekateryna Rak) gets a job as a cleaner in a nursing home, where nothing much happens except for the declining state of the bewildered patients, which is edited for laughs. The two Austrians unload the gumball machine, and the older of the two (Michael Thomas) gives the younger man (Paul Hofmann) a lesson in what the need for money will make people do. This involves the sexual humiliation of a young woman in which the actor and the director are complicit.
If the picture had any shock value, perhaps a case could be made for it, but it doesn’t; it’s just vile and tedious.
Cast:
Olga: Ekateryna Rak
Paul: Paul Hofmann
Also with: Michael Thomas, Maria Hofstatter, Georg Friedrich, Natalija Epureanu, Erich Finsches
Director: Ulrich Seidl; Screenwriters: Ulrich Seidl, Veronika Franz; Producers: Ulrich Seidl, Lucki Stipetic; Directors of photography: Edward Lachman, Wolfgang Thaler; Production designers: Andreas Donhauser, Renate Martin; Costume designer: Silvia Pernegger; Editor: Christof Schertenleib.
Reuters/Hollywood Reporter
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