Fest Track On Sirk TV Film Review: SOCIAL HYGIENE [Berlinale 2021 - Virtual]

Operating out of the normal guise of perspective can sometimes be seen as self-indulgent. But if it is assured and the writing completely keys into the construct that is being created...then it builds into something different. "Social Hygiene" [Encounters] from director Denis Cote does something remarkable and yet not perfect. It forces the viewer through set staging and frame to project what they believe someone looks like without seeing all their features until a certain point. It might help more watching it virtually but that might have been part of the construct. Either way, the way that this film, which is almost a theater piece uses the actors in no more than say 6 scenes , is able to interpret and almost psychoanalyze the completely essence of the man at its center is interesting (with him being both aware and non-aware).

Some scenes are more stilted than others on purpose. Some because of the backdrop of beautiful hills and forest have the light change as the characters talk through a scene in a frame that doesn't change. The sound design between wind, crows, thunder and rain adds to the cacophony. What makes it work at its center is the lyricality of the language. Once a viewer gets used to it (much like in an odd way "Letterkenny" does on Hulu), it becomes its own creature, especially when certain characters react against the nature of what the plot sees to be suggesting. Plus they hardly move. The lead character, who is a thief by trade who can never seem to get ahead yet wants to be a filmmaker, almost gets to the point that it seems the 4th wall might be broken and yet they are too far away.

The one character it drifts closer to a younger woman who seems to have a connection with nature and music but is the only time a character is physically manifested. But her dance is like a painting because she, like the main character's wife and his would-be mistress, see both the allure and the pathetic nature of the man in front of them. Even his sister berates him (not once but twice) but does it almost robotically. Their sequence taking about spontaneous combustion is particularly well done. The essence of fate and consequence in all rationality might be in the garden of this man's mind dealing with his subconscious as he struggles to wake up. "Social Hygiene" works on a simply metaphorical level but also speaks to the masks and expectations that people sometimes put on themselves. A-

By Tim Wassberg