Festival de Cannes/PA
"Tore Tanzt"
The Bottom Line
Dark German family drama out-Danes the Danish in Nordic bleakness league.
Venue
Cannes (Un Certain Regard), May 23
Starring
Julius Feldmeier, Sascha Gersak, Swantje Kohlhof, Annike Kuhl
Director
Katrin Gebbe
CANNES - The sole German feature playing in Cannes this year is an unsettling contemporary drama about religious faith and sexual violence, written and directed by 30-year-old first-timer Katrin Gebbe. Inspired by real events, Tore Tanzt screened at the festival under its provisional English-language title Nothing Bad Can Happen, though that has since been revised to Rising.
Reactions at the film's official Un Certain Regard premiere were extreme, with some booing, perhaps triggered by queasy subject matter more than any obvious technical flaws. While hardly an upbeat date movie, Tore Tanzt is intense and gripping, with solid indie credentials. More festivals and niche theatrical interest seem likely. A U.S. distribution deal with Drafthouse was finalized in Cannes on screening day.
Julius Feldmeier plays Tore, a gullible but open-hearted young man who has found a home with a ?punk? Christian sect based in a large, ramshackle house in the northern German city of Hamburg. Though his background remains unexplained, Tore is clearly a vulnerable lost soul looking for somewhere to belong. Following a chance encounter with outwardly charming family man Benno (Sascha Gersak), which he takes to be a sign from God, Tore drifts away from the sect and slowly becomes absorbed into a new surrogate family.
But there is something rotten at the heart of this apparently normal, welcoming family unit. Benno?s short-fuse temper, disturbingly intimate behavior towards his 15-year-old tomboy daughter Sanny (Swantje Kohlhof) and growing contempt for Tore?s religious principles pushes all of them into a bruising battle of wills that involves animal torture, rotting meat, prostitution and rape. The film climaxes with a torrid crescendo of psycho-sexual sadism and Biblical symbolism reminiscent of Lars Von Trier at his most pessimistic. A German film that attains Danish levels of soul-crushing bleakness? High praise indeed.
Divided into three chapters -- Faith, Love and Hope -- Tore Tanzt has the jumpy camerawork, tight domestic focus and self-consciously dark subject matter that often signifies a youthful debut. The mid-section drags a little, when Tore seems to dither over whether to flee from Benno?s evil machinations or test his own faith by staying. A tighter edit would have helped here. All the same, Gebbe has made a robust and compelling first feature, deftly shot and ably acted, especially by its younger cast members.
Production company: Junafilm
Producer: Verena Grafe-Hoft
Starring: Julius Feldmeier, Sascha Gersak, Swantje Kohlhof, Annike Kuhl
Director: Katrin Gebbe
Writer: Katrin Gebbe
Cinematographer: Moritz Schultheiss
Editor: Heika Gnida
Music: Peter Falk, Johannes Lehniger
Sales company: Celluloid Dreams
109 minutes
Source: http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/review/tore-tanzt-cannes-review-556775
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