Albert Schuch is excellent in acerbic social comedy about pretense and personality
A businessman needs a successful son to laud him at his jubilee, but his heir hates to be around? The aspiring lodger of a sought-after inner-city apartment needs a fashionable boyfriend to meet a diversity clause? A rich kid needs a father with a cool job for show-and-tell, but dad is a real bore? Then cultured and conversational Matthias (Albert Schuch) is the man for the job! The main character of Bernhard Wenger’s acerbic social comedy is a professional impersonator. Clients can book Matthias to play their perfect spouse, academic offspring, or stand-in for argument practice. His job fits so well in current times that it might already exist.
The Austrian director-writer is well aware of this timeliness. His sharp, though a little shallow first feature takes the idea of social performances to a literal extreme. With his friend and business partner David (Anton Noori) Matthias runs an agency for curated social performances. And he himself is the highest-rated impersonator of their team. In an age where authenticity is a fashionable accessory and appearance is everything, Matthias has found his niche. Only, he might get a bit too comfortable in it. He’s proficient at being whoever his surroundings want him to be, but struggles to be himself. The sudden breakup with his girlfriend Sophia (Julia Franz Richter) serves as a wake-up call.
At first, Sophia tries unsuccessfully to coax a genuine reaction from Matthias. But even a pony-sized Dane in their living room doesn’t elicit any particular reaction. Sophia walks out after telling her ex, he doesn’t seem “real” anymore. So the crumbling protagonist desperately tries to become more real. But how to escape inauthenticity if originality is just another act? Matthias’ struggle is both sad and comical in its exploration of self-loss and personality as a social construct. The second aspect appears as a main concern of a vapid upper-middle class consumed by image improvement. This clientele elaborately stages the bourgeois expectations they need to meet: a loving traditional family life, political progressiveness, prestigious progeny, academic and attractive romantic partners.
This façade, of course, reinforces the same social standards, creating an ever-increasing customer base for Matthias. However, his hapless attempts at building his personality even affect his professional capabilities. Allegedly, Wenger got the idea for his screenplay from Japan’s recent surge in rent-a-friend services. But the concept itself isn’t that new. Playing a girlfriend, wife, or business partner in official social settings is a standard service in escorting. More original then the idea of hired fake-companions are the episodes when a team of professional impersonators enacts whole scenes. In one such example, Matthias pretends to defend an elderly couple against young rowdies to feign civil courage. Other episodes are much more dubious. They leave both him and the audience wondering what is real and what is fake.
It’s a pity Wenger doesn’t do more with this concept. His wryly comical plot is mainly a collection of vignettes from Matthias’ work and life. Thanks to Schuch’s fantastic turn, most of these are amusing. However, the glossy, formalistic images, unobtrusive soundtrack, and polished performances almost feel too neat. There are some nice visual jokes hidden in the background, like Matthias curious collection of animal sculptures: a supposed marker of originality which he only copies from his workplace. The dialogue, though, is never quite as funny as it seems supposed to be. The social commentary is rather dusty and flat, insisting that paid companionship and social mimicry was somehow psychologically erosive. Crucially, the plot never shows what a “true” personality is actually supposed to be. If Matthias is genuinely vacant and impersonal, isn’t that his real self? These narrative contradictions give this promising debut a slightly stale aftertaste.
- OT: Pfau – Bin ich echt?
- Director: Bernhard Wenger
- Year: 2024
