NEW DIRECTORS/NEW FILMS 2020 (March 25-April 5, 2020)

[Chris Knipp]

SONDRA WOLLNER: THE TROUBLE WITH BEING BORN (2020)



An unspeakably creepy and precise film about desire and the future from Austria

Austria is where such things often come from. We follow an android constructed by a father of his young daughter and then used in vaguely unspeakable ways. A ten-year-old actress is used. She wanders off (semi-human, perhaps, as in Spielberg's A.I.) and is taken up by an old crone who misses the younger brother she lost many years ago. Somehow the android is repurposed easily as a male.

Some lines of thought really don't bear being worked out or, when they are, being watched as movies. But you may want to watch this, because it is undoubtedly impeccable in its construction. In her Variety review Jessica Kiang calls it "rivetingly unsavory," a "a desperately creepy, queasy, thought-provoking film", and ends, "Wollner's lacerating intelligence and riveting craft make this extraordinarily effed-up riff on the 'Pinocchio' legend [and] . . . much more than empty provocation."

The Trouble with Being Born, 94 mins., debuted at the Berlinale Feb. 2020, and won the special jury award there in the Encounters section. It played at about a dozen other international festivals, including the postponed Dec. virtual pandemic edition of the 2020 New Directors/New Films, where it was screened for this brief notice Dec. 15, 2020.