Fantastic Fest 2010: Fatso
[A couple days after the festival, I know, but with travel and employment resuming I finally have a moment to recount my thoughts on Arild Fröhlich's FATSO]
Rino lives alone in what was his grandmother's house. By day he translates technical manuals from German. By night he routinely masturbates to porn, draws cartoons of himself as a well endowed rhino saving hot bunnies from muscle headed Dobermans, or dreams about lots and lots beautiful women. The routines are broken by visits from his friend Fillip; think the love child of Steve Buscemi and 'Weird Al' Yankovic circa UHF. Then Rino's life gets turned on its head when his father tells him that he has rented out the spare room in the house. And holy crap if the young Swedish woman, Malin, is not one of the girls from Rino's dreams. She is gorgeous and fit. Malin has moved to Norway to get out of her own little rut back home and start a new life. It is possible that she can consume more alcohol in a single sitting than Rino can.
The gross out humor in Fatso rivals that of any sex comedy of any nation. It is possible that you may rethink adding certain fruits to your fruit salad next time around or even 'lending a hand to the unemployed'- forever. And yet what makes Fatso stand out from the rest is an honest attempt at the exploration of self esteem and identity. Your thoughts at any time in the film could be, 'Holy crap, I want to be this guy' or quite the opposite reaction, 'Holy crap, I think I am this guy'.
In a collection of scenes Rino takes a chance and joins Malin and her friends in a park. Her new friends would appear to be genuinely interested in what he does and who he is. Rino starts to come out of his shell, much to the chagrin of Fillip, and joins in on Malin's house warming party. Rino starts to gain a little bit of confidence in himself. Yet, once Malin sets Rino up on a blind date with an attractive woman of equal air displacement he takes offence. He thinks himself above this, having not given the date a moment to begin, and cannot get beyond the physical appearance of his date. Rino has spent so much of his extracurricular time masturbating to the sexy images of pornography he is incapable of looking beyond the physical appearance of a woman thus he is equally incapable of relating to Malin once she discovers that she is in a doomed relationship with a young stud. He cannot relate to her because up until now she's only been a sexy and fit Swedish girl. So while the story in Fatso focuses primarily on Rino and his own esteem and issues I think the point of Malin is to remind us that such problems are universal and everyone, regardless of physical appearance or social graces, is on the same playing field trying to negotiate their way through the same hurdles.
In the end Fatso isn't about getting it right, finding that winning formula, or getting the girl. It avoids falling into the trap of making everything right in Rino's world. Because, quite simply, life isn't that easy. Fatso is more about understanding yourself and out of that understanding that sometimes there is a necessity for changes to be made. And with that Rino does grow a bit in confidence around beautiful woman. He will still fantasize about beautiful naked women, as the closing shot demonstrates admirably, but now, perhaps, a certain fruit won't have to take part in his fantasies.
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