Antares - Studien der Liebe
Austria 2004

Opening 14 Jul 2005

Directed by: Götz Spielmann
Writing credits: Götz Spielmann
Principal actors: Petra Morzé, Andreas Patton, Hary Prinz, Susanne Wuest, Dennis Cubic

As the Austrian Best Foreign Film submission to the 2005 Oscars, Antares should have been a great movie. Alas, there was nothing great about this movie. Writer/director Götz Spielmann thinks that he has made a very clever story about the goings-on in three different apartments in the same building. He took extreme care in overlapping the separate storylines by letting the characters have coincidental encounters. However, there was nothing insightful, fateful or destined about these meetings; afterall, one tends to meet or hear his neighbors in the hall or parking garage often enough. The elements of this continuity, though, gave me something to focus on during the film, and I was admittedly impressed with the consistency. (Too bad the editor did not take the same attention to detail in cutting the boom mike out of the top of several shots.)

The storylines themselves are dark, depressing, and have nothing to do with love. Instead, jealously, domestic violence and adultery are the main themes. None of characters are the least bit endearing, and none of them (with the exception of the one who dies) have any great transformations or revelations. According to Spielmann, he did this so that love could remain a utopia. The 39 days he spent on filming would have been better spent on a shrink’s couch, which is where I should go directly if I waste another second thinking about this film. (Alyssa Cirelli)