There’s a short but key scene almost exactly halfway through The Ground Beneath My Feet where Austrian writer-director Marie Kreutzer performs the kind of magic that any artist should aspire to; she produces something in her chosen form that couldn’t work in any other medium. In that scene, the film’s permanently stressed protagonist Lola Wegenstein (a superb performance by Valerie Pachner) has abruptly terminated a doctor’s appointment that she didn’t really want in the first place. As she hurries away, we see in a wide shot that the road Lola walks on passes under a glass corridor joining two parts of the building. As the camera impassively watches Lola stride along the street, a figure walks along the corridor and meets with two people coming from the other direction. They stop and exchange a few words and as Lola glances up and back towards the corridor, the viewer knows that she thinks they are talking about her. This could be described in a novel or drawn in a comic book with the addition of a thought bubble, but Kreutzer does it with maximum simplicity, no words, no dramatic gestures or music, just a beautifully framed shot and the momentum that comes from her skillful tightening of tension and Pachner’s performance up to that moment.
The Ground Beneath My Feet belongs to a near-genre: the nervous breakdown movie. As such it sits somewhere between Fielder Cook’s well-acted-but-prosaic Seize the Day and Roman Polanski’s brilliantly hysterical Repulsion. Lola is a Viennese businesswoman who works for one of those companies that specializes in helping ailing businesses by, as the euphemism goes ‘restructuring’ them, i.e. sacking as many or as few of the workforce as necessary. She is an intense, focused young woman who is exceptionally good at her job but who, over the course of the movie’s concise 108-minute running time struggles with her responsibility for her suicidal older sister Conny (Pia Hierzegger), who suffers from paranoid schizophrenia, and with her own mental state which deteriorates as her stress mounts. Her stress is understandable; in the high-pressure world of her job, her sister’s existence is an inconvenience, almost an embarrassment and it transpires that Lola’s work colleagues – she seems not to have any close friends – and even her girlfriend Elise (Mavie Hörbiger), believe Lola to be an orphan with no living family. In addition to Conny’s worsening state, Lola is engaged with a particularly difficult and delicate case at work, which could result in her promotion if handled well, and to make the pressure even worse her girlfriend, who, like her sister is a secret to be kept from her colleagues, is in fact her boss.
As the film opens, Lola wakes with a start before jogging around the city at dawn and we quickly realize that this is part of a life defined and bounded by habit bordering on ritual. Lola is a high achiever but her essentially lonely, enclosed life is one of anonymous repetition; the movie’s landscape consists of airports, hotels, conference rooms, meetings, gyms. The movie’s design is, like Lola herself, low-key and withdrawn and is perfectly captured by Leena Koppe’s beautiful and subtle cinematography. The palette is subdued and harmonious, much of the film takes place in the evening or early morning and when there are daytime exterior shots the atmosphere is cool and autumnal. The soundtrack is muted and on the few occasions where the film breaks out of this mode – such as a scene where Conny is being restrained in a harshly-lit hospital ward and screams abuse at Lola – the effect is shockingly jarring. As the film progresses, Lola receives notes and distress calls from Conny but from quite early on the viewer isn’t sure if they are really happening or are a manifestation of Lola’s guilt and her own deteriorating mental state. Lola constantly tries to maintain an unflappable façade, but even from her first meeting with Conny’s doctor, her wilful self-delusion is obvious. She unconvincingly asserts that Conny’s suicide attempt was an accident, adding the highly un-reassuring detail that it’s not an unusual event; Conny is incarcerated at least once a year. As soon as possible, Lola, who permanently maintains an air of ‘don’t-have-time-for-this’ makes her excuses and leaves.
Continually wrongfooted by circumstances, Lola always seems to be ill at ease, even in the work situations that seem previously to have been her comfort zone. The viewer quickly becomes aware, as Lola’s colleagues and clients are, but Lola herself seems not to be, that despite her businesslike exterior she is continually distracted and never fully engaged with her work. When, after a particularly fraught day she is finally alone with Elise in what should be a scene of intimacy and relaxation, Lola finally unburdens herself, but Elise’s response is far from comforting. After a phone call which seems to be from Conny but which logically can’t be, Lola explains; “I have a sister.” “But you said you’re an orphan and you’re all alone.” “I am an orphan and all alone. Conny is ill… The cool big sister I once had doesn’t exist anymore […] She’s not fit for life.” Lola explains that after the death of their parents, which she offers no details about, Conny became Lola’s guardian, but within a short period of time that situation was reversed. After this painful admission, Elise’s response, rather than to offer sympathy or understanding, is to ask if schizophrenia is hereditary. We never in fact find out if the girls’ mother suffered from the illness, only that she was never committed to an institution – with the unspoken implication that she was indeed a schizophrenic. When we see the sisters together, Conny, though often infuriating is sometimes a more sympathetic character than Lola, poignantly nostalgic for the days when she was the big sister and Lola the vulnerable child, while Lola herself seems mostly impatient with the burden of caring for Conny.
Several key scenes point towards the fact that, though she hides it to the best of her ability, Lola’s mental state is barely better than her sister’s. One night, while away on business in Rostock, she apparently receives a call from Conny, who says she can see Lola standing naked in front of the window. Lola throws on a robe and rushes out into the street, but we already know that she won’t find Conny there. To complicate matters, although Lola is clearly deluded, her instincts aren’t entirely wrong and one of Kreutzer’s achievements is to make the viewer feel paranoid on Lola’s behalf. Whatever the truth of the situation with Conny, we see that Lola is patronized and discriminated against chauvinistically by male clients and colleagues. Worse than that, Lola’s closest confidant is Elise who is at best cool and businesslike; the feeling that, in normal circumstances Lola and Elise are very alike is reinforced by their similar looks and dress sense. As Lola drifts further from her usual assured mental state, her distress and uncertainty begin to alienate Elise. The result of this is that in the early part of the film Elise mentions several times that after the Rostock business is concluded the pair will work together on a high-profile project in Sydney, but when the time comes, Elise leaves Rostock without telling Lola, leaving Lola to discover that her supercilious colleague Sebastian has landed the Sydney job instead. Lola races to Elise’s home to confront her but allows herself to be placated by the news that she will be promoted the next day and Sebastian, who Elise implies has been fobbed off with the thankless Sydney case, will be her subordinate. But although that makes sense and a cathartic sex scene with Elise seems to mend matters to an extent, both Lola and the viewer share the knowledge that Elise didn’t expect Lola’s arrival and was prepared to fly off to Sydney with Sebastian without giving Lola the news of her promotion in person.
There really is no plot to speak of – Lola flies back and forth between business meetings and visits with Conny, dealing unsatisfactorily with both situations – but it’s utterly gripping nonetheless. Lola isn’t even a likable character exactly, but thanks to Valerie Pachner’s subtle, deadpan but brilliantly nuanced performance she always elicits the viewer’s sympathy. Striving to seem cool and calm at all times, Lola instead seems to live in a permanent state of flustered-ness and it’s only in her scenes with Conny that she manages, damagingly, to maintain her chilled exterior. Eventually, after a tragic but not unpredictable turn of events that can’t really be called a climax, Lola is truly alone and the film ends as it began, with Lola running through the city at dawn while in voiceover she reads words that are Conny’s, but which equally apply to herself: “as of yesterday I’m only distantly related to myself.”
The Ground Beneath My Feet is a character study that feels like a thriller. Stylishly directed, brilliantly acted, and profoundly empathetic, it repays repeated viewings with its gradual accumulation of barely-noticed details and telling absences. In comparison with your average three-hour blockbuster not much happens, but it makes most plot-oriented films feel empty by comparison. One of the joys of the movie-streaming world is that you come across films that might otherwise have passed you by and after a few viewings this little Austrian film feels more and more like a masterpiece.
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