Models

Models (Austria, 1998, Ulrich Seidl, director) was my first film of the festival. It was a thoroughly unpleasant tale, shot in a documentary style, about coked-up and unhappy models in Vienna. The excruciatingly long scenes alternated between existential longings for love and meaning, whining about physical imperfections, real or imagined, and hedonistic pursuits. It made its points in the first ten minutes, then kept making them over and over and over for the next hundred and ten. Maybe that was the point. Not sure if I’m grading the film only or the whole experience, but I gave it 5/10.