[Rene]

gesehen am 16.03.2019 (Kino: DFF Frankfurt); 3/5

A man out of nowhere (or rather, almost the same, out of television) is picked up and seduced by a mysterious blond, who keeps everything but her blonde hair and breasts in the shadow. Afterwards he tries to fill in the missing parts by entering a house inhabited by two sisters (and a grumpy maid expertly used for comedic relief). One of the sisters is played by Marina Vlady, who is wheelchair-bound and called Eva, like in LES SALAUDS VONT EN ENFER, but she is no longer a first woman, because now, there are two of them. Her sister is played by Odile Versois, and of course, both have blonde hair.

They take the man (Hossein himself) in, and, of course, the game of seduction and counterseduction, of suspicion and distraction, starts almost immediately. But what fascinates me most is that, once again, despite the minimalist setup and expert use of space (you are always provided, in all of Hossein's film, an exact spatial delimination of all the decicive elements), this doesn't really feel like a "tight narrative". The suspense elements pop up only now and then, and rather than leading up to a climax, they just accumulate. It's more about rhythm and repetition than about causes and consequences. For quite a while you get the feeling that, despite all the hysterics, both real and imagined, the two sisters and their mutual not-quite-lover could just go on with their present arrangement: three damaged lives, keeping each other in check, and getting at least some kicks out of it, sometimes. "I could eat half a horse", Versois tells us at one time.
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"Film is like a battleground: love, hate, action, violence, death. In one word: emotion."