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What Ulrich Seidl's new film reveals

Hell is hanging on the wall in his room.

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What Ulrich Seidl's new film reveals

Hell is hanging on the wall in his room. In his parents' house, where everything is still the way it was then. Like the mid seventies. In which are also the dead animals and the guns in the basement.

That's actually not a good omen for Richie Bravo, that with Höllerich. Everything revolves around Richie Bravo in Ulrich Seidl's new film. His name is Rimini. Gerhard Höllerich, who called himself Roy Black, didn't last as long as Richie Bravo. The pop singing, the longing, the drinking. Hellerich was 48 when he died, it must have been multi-organ failure.

If the biography given with his best-of CD, which is supposed to be released in September, is correct, Richie is 59. His organs are still working fine. He's the pretty much fleshed-out end of the season anyway.

He sings and drinks and plays and fucks his way through Seidl's film, the funniest, most romantic, most philanthropic of all dark Austrian film directors. His name is Rimini. He could also have been called "Richie Bravo". Or "end of the night". Or "Insieme con te". These are Richie Bravo's smash hits invented for "Rimini".

Watching Seidl's films, they say, is looking into the abyss. Which would only be true if the world were an abyss. In Seidl's films you watch the world as it is. So the western one. On the edges, where you can better see her essence.

In Seidl's documentaries and documentary feature films one has encountered rather sinister characters. Characters that you have seen doing things that you – if “you” are the majority of your audience who expose themselves to Seidl’s films with a wonderful lust for fear – you simply don’t do, for example having sex with a crucifix or your partner to increase sexuality Getting aroused to lick the toilet clean. You really don't want to get stuck in an elevator with them.

You don't do what Richie Bravo does, but the elevator thing could be quite an interesting and fun experience for him. Of all the members of Seidl's pandemonium, Richie Bravo is decidedly the loveliest. Of course, that doesn't mean he's a nice guy. "Rimini" has to be imagined as a kind of RomCom of Seidl's oeuvre.

Since nine years ago, Seidl's "Paradise" trilogy ("Faith", "Love" and "Hope" were the parts they were called) ran in its entirety at the Berlinale, at least the feature film director Ulrich Seidl had disappeared. The shooting of "Rimini", which for a long time had the working title "Evil Games", was completed in spring 2018 after a year and 85 days of shooting. "Sparta," sort of the twin film to "Rimini," which tells the story of Richie's younger brother, is in post-production.

It starts with Hans-Michael Rehberg, who died during the shooting. Rehberg is Richie's father. His name is Ekkehard. His room in the normal misery of a Lower Austrian retirement home can be recognized by the wild boar sticker on the door.

"Such a day, as wonderful as today" sing the old people behind their walkers at the beginning. Then you see Ekkehard driving his last vehicle against closed doors. Ekkehard has dementia. Ekkehard is desperate.

What an old Nazi like he has to do first. You really want to put out a few candles for Hans-Michael Rehberg after the cinema. It moves you to tears, especially if you stick it out to the end, which you absolutely have to do.

Richie's mother is dead now. That's why he's here now. Walks through the house, the museum of his existence, shoots schnapps bottles in the basement with his brother, drinks the rest of it, sleeps under the Höllerich poster, takes Mama underground and drives back to Rimini, where he sings and drinks and fucks.

It's a place of longing for an entire generation that has already taken a seat, so to speak, on the threshold of the retirement home and beyond. They still go there. Buses spew them out in front of the hotels on the beach in the drizzle. In the postseason of her life.

And what we see they don't see, what we feel they don't feel. This cold, this awful cold. It runs through Seidl's Rimini like pike soup. Snow is falling, everything is grey, one feels sorry for the palm trees, what was always miserable about Rimini, that wrecked ship of German holiday dreams, looks even more miserable. The existential emptiness, the loneliness lies just by watching like hoarfrost on the inside of our souls.

Seidl's films are actually always studies of loneliness, stories about how people are able to endure it, exploring emptiness. Richie Bravo is the champion loneliness fighting sport. He used to be one, then something broke down, marriages for example, then he went to Italy.

He made it to the top of the charts. The fans are still following him. Gray women who need electric blankets while Richie Bravo sings, songs of love and longing and the really big feelings that never have an end to the season. Which he warms with the hot lard of his really bad hits.

He then sings “Insieme con te” and “Emilia” and the song of Winnetou and freedom. And the longing warms them both, the old fans and him. And then he goes to their room, and then he allows himself to be dominated in bed, then he gives them sex, while next door next door the ailing mother dawns on her death. And takes money for it. Because it's so tight that he rents out his Villa Bravo with the white grand piano and everything that makes a pop singer's villa to fans. Vacation at the Richie Bravo Museum. It's unbearable without alcohol.

Michael Thomas is Richie Bravo. And he is until it hurts and beyond. He has long hair, the corset is in place, and the rings on his fingers sparkle. Thomas used to play the Old Shatterhand. And he can sing. Musicals for example. Ricardo Muti once wanted him for a “Magic Flute” at La Scala in Milan because he was looking for a singer in Elvis format. He sings fabulous. He masters the whole organ of the Schlager.

Richie believes what he sings. The longing, the lard, the kitsch. He is free when he sings. On the empty stage, on top of the empty hotel. Sometimes you think he's about to jump. Could go on like this. Always on the cutting edge.

Then the father escapes, first mentally and then physically, recalling Landser songs, and his Nazi past catches up with him. Then there is Tessa, the daughter who Richie owes a life to. And who is now demanding it with the relentlessness of a terrorist. More and more refugees are standing or lying around on the beach and in the streets. Then they are at Villa Bravo. “Rimini” is also a very bad dream of the West going under.

And then the old Schlager fuzzi sings about the “end of the night”, and the old Landser sings Schubert’s “Gute Nacht” in the terribly sad loneliness of his terribly sad old people’s home. He sings that he has moved in as a stranger, and as a stranger again. And then he cries. We can't get rid of the story. And not our life.

Could be sentimental, this winter trip to the graveyard of dreams and longings. Could be a reckoning, a satire, an exposure. But it never will. We are in an Ulrich Seidl film. And in the end we are very quiet. And miss Hans-Michael Rehberg.

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