Films about the hypocrisies of the art world and the chattering classes have always been a staple of European cinema, and the 44th Istanbul Film Festival featured a couple of them from the German-speaking world: "What Marielle Knows" and "Peacock." The bar was set high for this kind of venture by Ruben Östlund’s "The Square" in 2017, and both these films at the festival referenced it in different ways, with a heavy dose of the uncanny in both.
The film that references it more directly is the Austrian Bernhard Wenger’s 2024 film "Peacock." The original German title "Pfau – Bin Ich Echt?" gets more directly to the subject matter, making a wordplay with "Pfau," both an exclamation of wonder and the word for peacock. The subject of the film is revealed in the second half of the title, posing the question "Am I real?" as it is about a professional male companion who can be rented for special occasions. He can be your son for your 60th birthday party, your partner for a flat viewing, or your husband for arguing practice.
I went into the film thinking it would be a panorama of Austrian society and its contemporary needs, but it really centered on our hero, Matthias, who tries to be all things to all people. After we watched his first performance at a gathering, it was a surprise to discover that he had a girlfriend. When and why he started this job, and how long his girlfriend has been putting up with it, are a mystery in the film, but it begins with their relationship cracking and Matthias trying to find his footing once his one anchor in reality is lost.
Matthias’ home is straight out of a chic living style and straightforward living style magazine, not a single thing out of place. He is, accordingly, often chosen for events attended by the upper classes. The first job we see him in is a cello concert in a lush botanical garden. He is accompanying an elderly woman and has all the proper musical references when asked for his opinion. Again, we do not know how he has such cultural capital- he must have studied something in the arts. At the concert, he makes a connection with another guest, a Scandinavian young woman who has actually studied music. It is intriguing watching them interact, as it parallels a conversation with a real person and an AI.
The person who can tell the difference best is, of course, the ex-girlfriend who has been living with this fake human for a while. In one scene, Matthias tries to get her back through a mise-en-scene he’s acted in so many times. The audience understands the incident to be staged, but will the girlfriend? Yes. Just as any teacher can tell that ChatGPT has written a student’s homework in 10 seconds, she knows what she has just witnessed was staged. It is this, more than anything else, that sends Matthias over into depression.
One could of course read this film as a funny take down of a "performance" industry, but of course the director is inviting us to see ourselves in Matthias, the way we become all things to all people and are unable to hold a personal, political view. The finale can be seen as pessimistic because when Matthias attempts to engage in an act of subversion at his client’s 60th birthday party (the scene that references "The Square"), rather than acknowledging it as rebellion, the guests perceive it as a piece of performance art. If all our acts can be co-opted by art or certain political movements through interpretation, is freedom of action at all possible? The film’s answer seems to be no.
The second film set in a similar cultural milieu is Frederic Hambalek’s "What Marielle Knows." It is about a couple and their daughter, who belong to the same social class as the characters in "Peacock." The film’s gambit unfolds very early on, so it will not be a spoiler when I tell you that Marielle, the daughter, gets slapped by a friend and then starts to see, like a clairvoyant, what her parents are up to, even when they are away. The actor playing the father, Felix Kramer, is a performer who can harness the power of obnoxiousness very well, and in his first scene, we see him trying to decide the cover design of a book. The conversation he has about the cover picture at the publishing editors board echoes the one at the concert in "Peacock" in its pretentiousness.
The mother, too, has a desk job, and her office seems a bit wealthier, although we never find out what she does for a living. The office space for both parents is where they engage in their little acts of transgression, and then they come home to find that their daughter knows all about them. Although this was not the central focus, what struck me about the film was its portrayal of gender roles. This is supposed to be a "liberal" household with the same kind of streamlined furniture seen in "Peacock," and yet we always see the mother preparing the food and taking the daughter to school every day, despite her clothes suggesting that hers is the better-paying job.
The father and daughter are together in the car only once, and that is when Marielle is being taken to the friend who slapped her, so that she can apologize for what she said to her that caused the slap, and the friend can apologize for slapping. It is a highly uncomfortable scene with the two children unwilling to apologize and indeed a perfect metaphor for political correctness and the "liberal consensus." Everything is performance, and the grievances continue to smolder.
To reverse their daughter’s condition, who has now seen her mother being unfaithful to the father and the father beating someone up, the parents try a few things, including slapping their daughter. German nostalgia for (domestic) violence is quite something. The apparent option of trying to find the cause of what led to the two girls fighting in the first place seems elusive to the director. If we take the film to be an allegory, this is where the story falters, as does German society, prescribing reconciliation rituals that don’t get to the heart of the matter.
