In the opening minutes of Hypnoses a young woman tells about her first period and the discovery that she suffers from hemophilia. What seems like a spontaneous confession turns out to be a rehearsed sales pitch a few moments later. Ernst De Geer’s feature debut is a film about performance. About the roles we play in social situations and relationships, and the consequences if you deviate from them. When you simply no longer adhere to the rules of the game.
Vera (Asta Kamma August) and André (Herbert Nordrum) are both love and business partners. Together they came up with an app that helps women monitor their health and cycle. The division of roles between the two is clear. He is the leader, she is the somewhat timid follower. In just a few scenes, De Geer manages to sketch how Vera bends to others in each of her relationships and never puts herself first.
With their app, the two have been selected for Shake Up, a weekend of workshops that ends with giving a pitch to potential investors. Just before they leave, Vera quickly visits a hypnotherapist to quit smoking. An obnoxious habit, but perhaps one of the few habits that is her own.
When she then gets into the car with André, something seems to have changed. It is still subtle at that moment, she is at most slightly more excited than before, but the somewhat nervous glances that André casts sideways are telling. Once at the conference, Vera’s behavior becomes steadily more erratic. She ignores their rehearsed small talk, pours herself a glass of milk in a restaurant and starts carrying an imaginary Chihuahua puppy with her everywhere.
Cheerful millennials
It is not a groundbreaking concept to expose how much we as humans keep up appearances in social situations through someone who abandons all social mores and decorum. De Geer’s compatriot Ruben Östlund built his career on scraping away that veneer of civilization with films like Tourist, The Square and Triangle of Sadness.
But where Östlund broadens his sights, De Geer’s film is a satire on guru-like workshop leaders who help you develop ‘the superstar you have inside’ and millennials who boast among themselves, above all a sharp study of one relationship and its dynamics in there.
The stranger Vera acts, the more the film focuses on André. Because her changing behavior also affects him. Without the girlfriend who literally and figuratively looks up to him and conforms to his superiority, he suddenly turns out to be a know-it-all striver.
The way Herbert Nordrum, best known for his role in The Worst Person of the World, which physically plays out change, is very strong. The nonchalance he puts into his posture in the first scenes makes way for slouching, as if his body has suddenly become a size too big. Resulting in a wonderful scene in which he sits down on a chair that is too high at a dinner and tries to fold that body clumsily.
And Asta Kamma August also plays a strong role as Vera, a character with whom it is not always easy to sympathize. But that perhaps says something about how used to characters who behave in a socially desirable and unambiguous manner. The way you look at Vera’s actions and whether or not you classify them is bad, and above all it also forms a mirror.
Humans as a malleable collection of data
Because whose behavior is actually really reprehensible? Initially, Vera’s ‘authentic’ and ‘unfiltered’ behavior is praised in the workshops. But as soon as it no longer just challenges but crushes social conventions, it must be curbed. Pushed back into her cage like a dog.
What does self-development mean, if at the same time there are constant limits on how you should behave? That may also be the reason why De Geer situates his film in the start-up world. With all those apps that reduce people to a malleable collection of data. Where then is the capriciousness? Is there still room to change as a person, even if only for a while? And are we actually prepared to accept change in someone else?
Dogs
Dogs form an interesting motif Hypnoses, with which Swedish director Ernst De Geer makes his feature debut. In an interview with Variety he said that one of his inspirations for the film was a Donald Duck cartoon in which someone hypnotizes a dog. In the film itself, the dog mainly has a metaphorical role. “We liked that the dog could represent different things,” De Geer says in the same interview. On the one hand, the uninhibited nature of a dog that is allowed off the leash for a while, but also the obedience to its owner. The film carries these metaphorical meanings into the wonderfully bizarre final chord.
Hypnoses
Direction Ernst De Geer
Of Herbert Nordrum, Asta Kamma August, Andréa Edwards
Can be seen in Cinecenter, Eye, Filmhallen, Het Ketelhuis, The Movies, Rialto VU
Also from this week:
Fox and Hare save the forest: Mascha Halberstad’s new animated film is not animated in stop-motion, like Halberstad’s successful previous film Gruntbut the computer animation looks just as lovingly handmade.
The Fall Guy: In this crowd pleaser, Ryan Gosling plays the stunt double of a Hollywood star with capes. Director David Leitch delivers a three-layered meta-commentary on action filmmaking.
Terrestrial Verses: nine absurd conversations between a citizen and an authority figure, comical but also painful because you feel that everything is taken directly from everyday Iranian life.
The Stones and Brian Jones: the documentary attempts to provide insight into the enigmatic The Rolling Stones member Brian Jones, who tragically died at the age of 27, but remains on the surface.
L’Abbé Pierre: the film summarizes the life of a man who saw it as his divine mission to work for those who were less fortunate.
Tags: Review Hypnoses witty satire workshop leaders millennials awkwardness relationships
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