Dry Spell: Bareiša Explores Trauma in the Abstract
Repetitive patterns once again provide the narrative parameters reinforcing oblique happenings for Lithuanian director Laurynas Bareiša in his sophomore film, Drowning Dry. A reference to a highly debated non-medical term in which the absence of water in the lungs suggests death occurred before a liquid submersion, Bareiša attempts to construct a family’s tragedy through the fracturing processes of trauma, and thereby suggesting they’re already doomed by the time we’re even introduced to them. There’s also a major subtext on gendered roles and masculine posturing which ultimately catalyze two major events which prove to have irreconcilable consequences.… Read the rest
Amidst all the existential dread in Franz Kafka’s body of work, silver linings abound, perhaps no more succinctly than in an oft quoted phrase from his diaries, “The relief of giving intro destruction.” In their third feature, the Swiss filmmaking duo Ramon and Silvan Zürcher complete their metaphorical animal themed trilogy with a scream of significant anguish (and relief) with The Sparrow in the Chimney (Der Spatz im Kamin), a culmination of the interconnected miseries and joys wrought through microcosmic communal situations explored previously in 2013’s The Strange Little Cat (
Death, it seems, does not quite become Christoph Hochhäusler, the Berlin School alum making his French language debut with the enigmatically titled La Mort viendra (Death Will Come). His foray into French language, a country which first lavished considerable acclaim upon the wave of Berlin School directors who cropped up in the late 1990s German cinema scene (such as Christian Petzold and Angela Schanelec), feels like something of a logical full circle moment for Hochhäusler in particular, who spent years trying to make an Isabelle Huppert headlined WWII drama I’ve Seen You Smile.… 
