Adaptation of ‘Eyes Wide Shut’ Source Material

It takes, to make use of a exact technical time period, chutzpah, for a filmmaker to adapt the identical supply materials as Stanley Kubrick. But that’s precisely what director Florian Frerichs (The Final Supper) has completed with Traumnovelle, his movie primarily based on Arthur Schnitzler’s traditional 1926 novella that additionally impressed Kubrick’s closing movie, 1999’s Eyes Huge Shut. Frerichs presents a cinematic tackle the story that’s extra devoted than Kubrick’s, and in addition extra erotic. (Kubrick, for all his brilliance, tended towards chilliness in his work, even when coping with racy themes). Nonetheless, it’s exhausting to keep away from making comparisons, which inevitably shade your opinion of this movie receiving its world premiere on the Oldenburg Movie Pageant.

The story has been up to date to modern-day Berlin, which permits the chance for such eyes-wide-opening touches because the one within the first scene, when two stunning girls come on to a person in a nightclub by demonstrating the salutary results of a vibrator app. The person is Jacob (Nikolai Kinski, Klaus’ son, who doesn’t challenge fairly the identical air of menace as his father), a physician, who has come to the membership together with his spouse Amelia (Laurine Value, Phoenix). Although each he and Amelia appeal to the attentions of the alternative intercourse whereas they’re out, they dutifully go residence collectively.

However the expertise does cause them to discuss sexual wishes and fantasies, with Amelia confessing to having change into infatuated from afar with a good-looking Danish naval officer whereas they have been lately on trip. This prompts an outraged and harm Jacob to move out into the night time, the place he experiences a sequence of weird, sexually tinged encounters — essentially the most notable of that are visits to a bordello after assembly a wonderful younger girl (Nora Islei) on the road and a personal intercourse occasion by which all of the members are required to put on masks.

Alongside the best way there are quite a few fantasy sequences, together with Jacob performing onstage in an opera and having blood coughed on him by fellow singers; and Jacob single-handedly subduing a gang of assailants, not less than till one among them stabs him within the abdomen. All of it comes throughout, as Schnitzer supposed — like an prolonged dream sequence with many parts sexualized, together with the nurse in Jacob’s workplace.

The director, working from a screenplay co-written with Martina van Delay, takes some large stylistic swings, equivalent to having Jacob all of the sudden break the fourth wall and handle viewers immediately pretty late within the proceedings. He additionally employs colourful animation, a few of it rotoscoped, throughout a dream sequence that’s visually hanging however feels incongruous with what’s preceded it. It additionally feels unusual that the dialogue is in English, with solely occasional snippets of German thrown in, like an outdated World Struggle II film.

Traumnovelle is definitely absorbing, due to the fascinatingly lurid nature of its supply materials, but it surely too typically feels redolent of the kind of soft-core erotica that used to pop up frequently on late-night cable, equivalent to Crimson Shoe Diaries. (On the movie’s conclusion, you half anticipate some considerate rumination by David Duchovny. As a substitute, we get a quote from Sigmund Freud.)

Kinski, who’s onscreen for nearly each minute, is a compellingly offbeat display screen presence, extra convincing in his journey down the sexual rabbit gap than Tom Cruise ever managed to be. His efficiency is likely one of the stronger parts in a movie that by no means fairly lives as much as its appreciable ambitions.