SFF 2011 - ATTENBERG Review

The Sydney Film Festival brings the best new films from around the world right to the audiences of Sydney. It runs from 8-19th of June and is one of Sydney's biggest annual events.

Set in a Greek factory town by the sea, Attenberg follows 23-year-old Marina, an unpredictable creature whose isolated habitat and limited human interaction have led her to mimic the repetitive behavior of animals featured in the David Attenborough documentaries. Her world is shaped by her father, whose health is decaying and her promiscuous friend Bella.

When recalling Attenberg, the words why and what seem to surface a lot. Firstly, why is Marina (Ariane Labed) like the way she is? That is antisocial, strange, blunt and wild. Secondly what about the human condition; it is being scrutinized, but ultimately what does Attenberg have to say about it?

The 'film', feeling more like a documentary about special autism, opens with Marina and her only friend Bella (Evangelia Randou) intensely tongue kissing without any semblance of emotion, less like animals and more like really curious school kids.

The French kiss is critically analyzed and the seriousness of Marina's responses is hilarious and bizarre. Then she begins to spout off facts and figures, equally wild and random. Later, Marina and Bella are seen mimicking one another, skipping down an abandoned parkway, synchronizing each step, bow, kick and twist. Throw in Marina's estranged passive-aggressive relationship with her dying father Spyros (Vangelis Mourikis) and a later unemotional sexual tryst she has with a man (Giorgos Lanthimos) and you have every single element that makes up this feature length film.

Literally repeat the elements of random conversation, synchronized dancing, father-daughter bonding and awkward intercourse and this is the structure of Attenberg. This repetition, whilst very strange is also mundane and without consequence, as Marina's odd behavior is not challenged by anyone in her life or outside it.

Marina questions norms and breaks taboos with conversations regarding prick (penis) trees and imagining her father naked. Regardless, she approaches every interaction with banality and the film itself begins to feel banal.

The acting in incredible from everyone involved, particularly Marina, but there is only so much of one idea that can be tolerated. Attenberg would have worked beautifully as a short film. It is easy to count all of the elements of Attenberg on one hand; it is just not complex enough, and with the unique material more could have been done instead of stretching this out to full length. Given this team produced the superior Dogtooth, I expected better.