Rating: C+
Austria
Dir: Severin Fiala, Veronika Franz
Star: Lukas Schwarz, Elias Schwarz, Susanne Wuest
a.k.a. Ich seh, Ich seh
It’s safe to say this film leaves itself open to interpretation. I’m fine with that, but I think I’d rather have had some more clues as to the intended meaning. Certainly, it is not every film which is capable of triggering a 257 post Reddit thread, offering hypotheses from personal loss to a metaphor for World War II. To be honest, such discussions are perhaps more entertaining than the film itself, which – perhaps deliberately – seems a bit of a slog. It feels, especially in the early going, that every scene asks more questions than it answers. And does so in a manner – certainly deliberately – that is calculated to irritate as much as engage.
The focus is on two brothers, Elias and Lukas (Schwarz and Schwarz), whose mother (Wuest) has just returned to their rural home after facial surgery, and her head is wrapped in bandages. But the family dynamic seems to have changed, and the siblings gradually come to believe that the woman is not their mother, but a doppelgänger. Complicating matters considerably, Lukas doesn’t exist. It appears he was killed in some kind of accident (like so much else here, it’s unclear), and Elias has refused to move on. He continues to play with his late brother, and tensions in the family build until he and Lukas decide to take matters further, and force their “mother” to confess that she is an imposter.
There’s a lot to unpack here, beginning with the title. The English one is radically changed from the original, which translates as “I see, I see”. Per that Reddit thread, that’s the German version of “I spy with my little eye…” I presume the opening of footage from a pre-Sound of Music film about the Von Trapp family is also significant. What that meaning is… Well, it’s up to you, because the film is willfully impenetrable. For example, the makes could very easily have told us what happened to Lukas; it’s clearly not a secret, both mother and surviving son knowing the truth. But they decide to hint at it instead: drowning seems most likely, with dying in a fire also a possibility.
This approach is consistent through the entire film, though it never feels as if the film-makers are being lazy. Instead, it’s a conscious effort to create a layered narrative that requires interpretation, and not everything you see has a basis in reality. Lukas feeding his mom a cockroach may not happen; him carving open her stomach for a slew of roaches to crawl out, definitely does not. Figuring out how much truly happens, and what, is just another unnecessary task dropped on the audience. There is an undeniable and tragic inevitability as things slowly escalate in the final act, and the insanity boils over into superglue and scissors. I’m just not sure the impact merits the considerable effort required to reach the film’s uncertain core meaning.
This review formed part of our October 2021 feature: 31 Countries of Horror.