THE STORY – Freshly released from a psychiatric hospital, 26-year-old Pia moves back to her parents’ house on the outskirts of Vienna – only to discover that she is not the only one whose life has fallen apart. Her parents, Elfie and Klaus, are also finding it hard to keep up with a world that is constantly changing. In the daily struggle to survive with a shaky new job, lingering heartbreak, her meds and social stigma, Pia stumbles into a reality that feels as unsteady as herself. Little by little she begins to transform – into a giant monster that threatens the world… or perhaps into a heroine who is destined to save it? Who gets to decide what is normal?
THE CAST – Luisa-Céline Gaffron, Elke Winkens, Cornelius Obonya, Felix Pöchhacker, David Scheid & Lion Thomas Tatzber
THE TEAM – Florian Pochlatko (Director/Writer)
THE RUNNING TIME – 102 Minutes
Who needs rules? Who needs standards, requirements, and limits? They can make life more manageable for most, but still, these arbitrary confinements can make daily living a punishing series of unreachable expectations for others. “How to Be Normal and the Oddness of the Other World” not only explores how some struggle to exist within the structures of modern living, but writer-director Florian Pochlatko also uses his film to stretch the possibilities of the cinematic form, refusing to be boxed in by pesky things like the limits of time and space, linear storytelling, or generalized earthbound sense. It’s a disorienting ride, and not all of it coalesces into something that feels tangible or comprehendible, but the creativity on display is inarguable.
The central figure navigating the oddness of the world is Pia (Luisa-Céline Gaffron), a young woman who’s just left a stint at a psychiatric hospital. She moves back in with her well-meaning parents, Elfie (Elke Winkens) and Klaus (Cornelius Obonya), who do their best to get her to stick to necessary practices like normal eating habits and working her newly-acquired office job. But even leaving her bedroom is a struggle for Pia, knowing that what will follow is an onslaught of side effects from her medication, along with daily occurrences that range from the tedious to the terrifying.
The film sticks closely to Pia for most of its runtime, with occasional check-ins with her exasperated parents. Elfie is a voiceover artist tasked with lending narration to increasingly troubling nature documentaries, whose subjects include asteroids and brain-controlling parasites. And Klaus works at the same printing company that hired Pia, which is in quiet disarray about an impending takeover from a mega-corporation that’s definitely, positively, absolutely not Amazon.
But when the film follows Pia, Pochlatko expertly uses a wide assortment of filmmaking techniques to put the audience inside her hurricane of a head. The editing is frantic and collage-like, which evokes a familiar feeling of mania to anyone who’s experienced a panic attack. Voiceover that externalizes Pia’s thoughts is also deployed in excess (at times, it’s appropriately overwhelming). Fascinatingly, these narratives are written with second-person “you”-based language, further blurring the line between audience and cinematic subject. Pochlatko puts a lot of energy on the screen, which only helps to make Pia’s more disquieting actions more understandable and even justifiable.
And it’s not just Pia’s inner thoughts brought to visual life that gives the film a sense of falseness. The world around her feels generally off, in the same way that our late capitalist reality seems somehow banal and apocalyptic at the same time. Elfie’s voiceover projects, Klaus’s workplace instability, and a sinister energy of surreptitious hostility all combine to underline and exaggerate the discomforts of our real world. It’s no wonder Pia wants to break free from it.
Gaffron makes for a fearsome leading player. She finds great variety in her many outbursts and episodes, never settling on portraying Pia as a typical “crazy person.” She has depth and evokes sympathy just as much as she frustrates viewers and her parents. Obonya also makes for an appropriately pitiable father figure, and Winkens is excellent as Pia’s constantly on-edge mother. She excels at sarcastically delivering Elfie’s more barbed lines, and as things get increasingly dramatic for her character, Winkens is more than up to the task of fully portraying a woman on the brink of losing it.
“How to Be Normal and the Oddness of the Other World” is an impressive but trying experience. Florian Pochlatko throws everything at the screen, which is sure to be too much for some, but undeniably helps convey to the audience how the main character exists on a daily basis. It’s a dizzying journey that’s an exciting showcase for its debut director.
