Berlin Film Review: All Of a Sudden

[dropcap]O[/dropcap]ne of man’s greatest fears is being accused of a crime he did not commit. This fear was the basis of basically half of Hitchcock’s films, and finds a fresh, dynamically brilliant angle in All Of A Sudden. When Anna (Natalia Bejitski) the last girl left at his party collapses and dies “all of a sudden” Karsten slowly find himself from being merely unlucky to prime suspect number one. Cleverly the precise moment of her demise are elided by filmmaker Asli Özge, so we cannot be entirely sure what transpired.

Beers were drunk and cigarettes were smoked, and they were being rather flirtatious with one another. However after she collapses, Karsten (Sebastian Hülk) makes a bizarre decision that could possibly make him capable of manslaughter. Instead of calling an ambulance right away, he decides to run to a nearby clinic in the hope that it is open at three in the morning. Just what was he doing?

The resulting accusation leads to an admittedly uneven riff upon Presumed Innocent, in which we cannot be sure of our protagonists intentions. It is heavily implied that, if he didn’t have sex with her already (which would leave no trace with use of a condom) that that was on his mind. This is in spite of the fact that he has a girlfriend.

…by the final act we can see that this is a wonderfully pitch-black comedy – and much less a film about crime than a satire of white male entitlement

To add more salt in the wound, we also find out that she was married. Still, at first, the viewer cannot help but empathise with his plight, as he gets demoted in his job, loses his girlfriend, and is smeared in the local press. It is only much later that his “woe pity me” schtick wears off and we realise what an entitled “Arschloch” (arsehole) he really is. Credit must go to actor Sebastian Hülk for being able to elicit both sympathy and ridicule from the audience – he manages to manipulate us in the audience as he manipulates the people around him.

Image: courtesy of Berlin Film Festival

In the best, most egotistical scene he climbs all the way to a top of a mountain (one assumes he is escaping from the world around him) only to shout “fuck you” to the unassuming village below. His father (Hanns Zischler) seems to be even worse, showing some serious xenophobia upon finding out the girl and her husband are Russian immigrants, and more worried about his self-image as a man about town than the accusations levelled towards his son. His friends aren’t particularly helpful either, accusing him of being a cheater and for feeling sorry for himself

During the beginning of the film there were scattered laughs in the audience, and it was hard to say whether this was intentional on behalf of the screenplay. However, by the final act we can see that this is a wonderfully pitch-black comedy – and much less a film about crime than a satire of white male entitlement. The later capitulating scenes justify some of the middling episodes in the middle as blank parody of standard “wrong man” narratives. By constantly shifting expectations, Özge keeps the viewer guessing right until the end.

Director: Asli Özge

Cast: Sebastian Huelk, Julia Jentsch, Hanns Zischler, Sascha Alexander Gersak, Luise Heyer, Lea Draeger, Natalia Belitski, Christoph Gawenda, Simon Eckert

Running time: 113 minutes

Country: Germany