Tambylles

“I just want to understand,” says the documentarist who first observes, but then later hounds, a young man who has been released from a juvenile detention centre so that he can start over. However, the deep wounds he inflicted on the parents of his victim, and people’s compulsion to have a clear view of things, complicate the journey he has undertaken. Will he be able to drive away the dangerous traits of his own character? And will those around him and, by extension, also the viewers understand what actually happened? The film, whose atmosphere is enhanced by first rate music from Jelly Belly and Southpaw, doesn’t head for some kind of catharsis; instead it exhaustively monitors the situation, tries to break through, and ends up subjecting the audience to a constant sense of anguish. Similar approaches are familiar from Michael Haneke’s work while, in its muted tone, Tambylles edges towards the style of Christian Petzold or Benjamin Heisenberg. And if all of these filmmakers have something in common, it’s the fact that their ambiguous position is an asset in their films, not the result of an absence of creative nerve. (Karlovy Vary International Film Festival)