Quartile rating: 7/10 · 1 rating
Filmmaker Ulrich Seidl explores of the dark underside of the human psyche by entering Austrian basements fitted out as private domains for secrets and fetishes.
Ulrich Seidl's documentary is a masterclass in deadpan observation, using his trademark static, symmetrical compositions to expose the bizarre, troubling, and occasionally touching private worlds Austrian homeowners have constructed in their basements. The cinematography is exquisite — rigidly formal framing that creates both humor and unease simultaneously, a signature Seidl aesthetic taken to its extreme. The novelty is genuinely high: few documentarians have so unflinchingly and non-judgmentally catalogued the strangeness of private obsession with such visual precision. The 'plot' is loose by design — a series of vignettes with no narrative arc — which works conceptually but leaves the film feeling somewhat shapeless, and the ending offers no resolution or synthesis, simply stopping rather than concluding.