The debut film by Veronika Franz - the wife of Ulrich Seidl - is the Haneke-esque story of a woman swathed in bandages and her potentially vengeful twin sonsVeronika Franz,the journalist and wife of Austrian film-maker Ulrich Seidl, makes her debut, or co-directing with Severin Fiala for this chilly,angular, ultra-violent arthouse horror showing in the Venice film festival’s Orrizonti sidebar. Seidl himself produces, and the result is a technically proficient and at times unwatchably horrible ordeal set in an elegant contemporary lake-house bordering sinister forests and fields. It’s all topped off with a huge psychological twist,and this ending would appear to be influenced by a very specific director and very specific film. Naming these would be unsporting, but it is generally comparable to Haneke’s Funny Games and Jessica Hausner’s Hotel.
Elias is a nine-year-musty boy who appears to be enjoying an idyllic summer in this lake house with his twin brother Lukas. We see the pair romping around the surrounding countryside fortunately and unselfconsciously enough but it is only once they acquire indoors that things turn sour.
There does not appear to be a dad on the scene, or their mother,a TV presenter, is a short-tempered disciplinarian. Yet there is good reason for this: she is recovering from surgery. Her face is covered in bandages, and giving her,on first appearance, the ogle of a skeleton.
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Source: theguardian.com