Writer and Director: Bernhard Wenger
This is one of those films that reminds you why you watch art house cinema. Bernhard Wenger’s tongue-in-cheek directorial debut has all the assurance of an old hand, its placid gaze capturing endless sight gags as people and animals do ridiculous things.
Matthias (Albrecht Schuch) lives in a sterile version of the world. His modernist dwelling resembles something between a private clinic and a mausoleum. With his solicitous colleague David (Anton Noori) he runs a friends-for-hire agency, carrying out many of the assignments himself. Always well groomed and attired, Matthias inhabits his various roles with great attention to detail, not realising that he’s losing his grip on his own true life and identity. He’s a knowledgeable companion at a concert one moment, someone’s fake son the next. For a primary school show-and-tell, he’s a boy’s airline pilot father, turning up in uniform.
If it’s a duplicitous life, it’s also devoid of conflict – at least on his side. Matthius is nonplussed when his girlfriend Sophia (Julia Franz Richter) ends their relationship, telling him he’s no longer ‘real’. He’s increasingly stalked by the husband of a woman he’s counselled, inadvertently encouraging her to walk out. Unable to fathom a new relationship with a Norwegian woman (Theresa Frostad Eggesbø), he virtually turns stalker himself.
Things only get worse, and funnier, when he joins a pretentious retreat in an effort to find himself. Throughout the proceedings, no matter how bizarre they become, Schuch maintains a slightly bewildered poker face. It’s as if everything around him is continually catching him out. Alongside him, offering solace, Noori is gloriously deadpan. Then there’s those animals. Sophia brings a hopelessly large dog into their home; when she leaves, Matthias acquires a hopelessly small one. It’s only later that we learn it’s a rented pet, in the same way that he’s a rented friend. There are starring roles, too, for a duck and a peacock, the latter giving the film its title.
The look and feel of the movie contributes a great deal to what’s enjoyable about it. Here is a different world, which almost looks like a science fiction dystopia, which is nevertheless contemporary. Writer-director Wenger is determined that we should ponder the meaning of lifestyles in which superficial indicators of wealth and beauty are allowed to assume greater importance than truth and purpose.
Released last year, the movie is showing as part of WatchAUT, the Austrian Film Festival. The single screening on 13 March is the London debut of the film which included a Q&A with Bernhard Wenger.
Peacock is screening at the third watchAUT Austrian Film Festival from 13 -16 March.
The Reviews Hub Score
Supreme silliness
