Summary
If you have ever moved house, you’ll know how tense that can be. The Zürcher brothers have bottled that uncertainty and magnified it several times in this psychological drama.
Swiss filmmakers Ramon Zürcher and Silvan Zürcher made their debut in 2013 with The Strange Little Cat, taking place almost entirely within the confines an apartment. They follow a similarly claustrophobic theme with THE GIRL AND THE SPIDER (Das Mädchen und die Spinne), a film that combines the horrors of moving house with unspoken drama of past relationships.
As Lisa (Liliane Amuat) moves out of the apartment she has shared with Mara (Henriette Confurius), we witness their activities over the course of two days and a night. People come and go, past and current relationships are exposed, and everyone feels like they are going through some kind of ritualised play.
For a film where there is no ostensible threat or overarching narrative driving each scene, the brothers Zürcher have infused it with an unbelievable amount of psychological tension. Frequent cutaways to jackhammering and sounds of the city leave us unnerved, and the constant movement results in frequent breakages of objects. After all, as Chekov might say, when you introduce a box cutter in the first act you partly expect someone to get cut in the third.
Mara is set up as an agent of chaos from her introduction, when Lisa’s parents ask her if she has herpes and she nonchalantly replies in the affirmative. Later she says the she “lies without batting an eyelid.” Yet as the film progresses, and more people are introduced, she becomes more vulnerable. She is simply one of the elements that threatens to break the delicate spider web they’re all entangled in.
Across a series of parties, sexual encounters and conversations, the Zürchers recall the kind of 1970s psychological horror that Nicolas Roeg or Roman Polanski might have made. In the light of day, jealousies seem petty or sniping. Over the course of a night, totemic animals and more over supernatural elements seem to loom larger than life. Or is this just an unfamiliar place being magnified in their minds?
The lingering ambiguity continues to the very end, where pervasive visuals of an ocean voyage dominate the denouement. Taken by themselves they might be flights of fantasy, but they could almost be memories of another time and place, as if this story was already written and has played out over and over again. Indeed, one gets the distinct impression that repeat viewings will uncover countless small clues to this line of thinking. Either way, this is a startlingly intense experience that confirms the talents of the Zürcher brothers.
2021 | Germany | DIRECTORS: Ramon Zürcher, Silvan Zürcher | WRITERS: Ramon Zürcher, Silvan Zürcher | CAST: Henriette Confurius, Liliane Amuat, Ursina Lardi, Flurin Giger, André M. Hennicke, Ivan Georgiev, Dagna Litzenberger Vinet, Lea Draeger, Sabine Timoteo, Birte Schnöink | DISTRIBUTOR: Cercamon, Berlinale 2021 | RUNNING TIME: 98 minutes | RELEASE DATE: 1-5 March 2021 (GER)
