Rimini

A blisteringly funny and often touching film about people struggling towards happiness despite having experienced lifetimes of disappointment.

We know there’s great tragedy and ugliness behind the smoke and mirrors, but we watch in amusement nonetheless. Sinisterly, Seidl reminds us how easy it is to turn people into objects for the taking.

The slight softening of the trademark Seidl savagery... tips the balance of the film from tragic to comic.

It’s impeccably performed, but with a dash of corn.

The film fleshes out the perhaps familiar characterizations at its center by tying contemporary wounds to the persistent presence of Europe’s ugly history.

One of Austrian director Ulrich Seidl’s better but not quite best features in a pretty consistent career, not as scurrilously seedy as him at his worst, or as merciless, but not as ambitious or startlingly insightful as his best.

A well-acted, honest and heartbreaking character study filled with melancholy.

Another pitch-black comedy from Austrian filmmaker Ulrich Seidl. His usual unblinking approach creates a character study that's impossible to look away from, with settings and people that have almost unnervingly documentary-style authenticity.

Seidl builds a fascinating film, albeit with a rather controversial and debatable conclusion, which in any case doesn't ruin the story. [Full review in Spanish]

The spectacle of Richie slouching almost daintily on his Toad of Toad Hall legs past Rimini's mist-shrouded shore and liminal spaces carries metaphorical weight: he’s a monument to selfishness and fraudulence in an entropic Europe.