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Ukrainian Olga (Rak) works as a nurse in a rundown hospital that can’t pay her wages in full. Austrian Paul (Hofmann) is training to be a security guard and shadowboxes in his cramped bedroom. Olga goes to work for a XXX website to make money. Paul attends a laughably remedial training session on interviewing for jobs. And so it goes, as Seidl cuts back and forth between these two characters whose unconnected lives he records with ruthless, clinical detachment. Seidl favors the long shot (there’s barely a single close-up in the entire film), which keeps us at an emotional distance from the two protagonists.
If we have more sympathy for Olga, it’s only because Paul is kind of a tool, “playfully” menacing his girlfriend with a pit bull and mooching off his stepfather. But Seidl doesn’t want us to get close to Olga either; he just wants us to see how awful life can be for her.
Sitting through this diptych of despair is rough going; Seidl doesn’t shy away from the debasement, whether it’s a woman fingering herself for a webcam or patients with advanced dementia. It’s not a hopeful film, but it’s definitely a powerful one.
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