Fate
((GERMAN -- 16mm))
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The intellectually pretentious "Fate" marks the directorial debut of Fred Kelemen, whose vision of the world is congruent with the notoriously gloomy, angst-ridden tone of earlier German cinema. Though intensely personal, this ponderous pic registers more as an academic exercise than a fully worked-out narrative, mandating strict confinement to the fest and arthouse circuits.
Narrative is made to demonstrate the director's epistemology, announced in the opening title card, that "the distance between our present life and hell can be as short as a single breath." To this end, story is set on one continuous -- and interminable -- night, in which the paths of several lonely individuals crisscross.
After being kicked out of another man's house, an accordion player wanders through dark, empty streets, goes into a fountain and issues a shrieking cri de coeur, a la Harvey Keitel in "Bad Lieutenant."
When his g.f. refuses to let him into her apartment, he forces his way in, only to discover she was having sex with another man. Shooting the other man, he beats her, while the camera zeros in on her trembling knees. Later on in a bar, a man courts this woman, while another makes sexual advances to her under the table.
Kelemen overstretches the "no communication" thesis -- his characters come from different countries, speak different languages and uphold different traditions. But he also wants to show that, despite their marginal solitude, the characters are all bound together by fate and the eternal quest for happiness and moral redemption.
The film's bleak imagery is far more impressive than its minimalist, broken dialogue. Long takes, meant to preserve real time, lend the picture some realism but also make it more tedious.
Ultimately, pic's message -- that almost every gesture of love and friendship can turn into misunderstanding, humiliation and defeat -- may be more reflective of the director's immature sensibility than of the logical state of his characters and their social networks.
VENICE
Camera (color, 16mm), Kelemen; assistant camera, Ann-Katrin Schaffner, Martina Radwan; sound, Alejandra Carmona; assistant director, Regina Krah. Reviewed at Toronto Film Festival, Sept. 12, 1994. Running time: 76 MIN.
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