Fantasia 2018: LUZ Review- An Intimate Head Trip
Anya Stanley
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Starring Johannes Benecke, Jan Bluthardt, Lilli Lorenz
Written by Tilman Singer
Directed by Tilman Singer
Reviewed at Fantasia 2018
“Is this how you want to live your life? Is this seriously what you want?”
This is our introduction to Luz Carrara (Luana Velis), the titled character of Tilman Singer’s strange supernatural horror film. On a dark and stormy night (really), a dirtied Luz stumbles into a sparsely-manned German police station and engages the receptionist with this simple question. Over the course of the story, it becomes clear that Luz is disturbed (or “gifted”, depending on whom you ask), and that this question is a precursor to underworldly horrors, similar to Lestat’s “I want to give you a choice that I never had” proposition in Interview With The Vampire. As Luz sits outside of an office, she mutters a blasphemous mockery of the Lord’s Prayer, further indicating that something is awry with her. Commissioner Bertillon (Nadja Stübiger) and her translator Olarte (Johannes Benecke) intervene and page their colleague, police psychiatrist Doctor Rossini (Jan Bluthardt) to help Luz and get to the bottom of what transpired before she entered the station.
Elsewhere in a cozy bar, Nora Vanderkurt (Julia Riedler), who is a former schoolmate of Luz, approaches a man who turns out to be Dr. Rossini. Nora tells the Doctor about Luz’s defiant younger days at Catholic school as she mixes a cocktail and concocts her tale. As she weaves her web, the doctor mixes his own drink as she does, utterly enraptured with her account of Luz’s ominous “gift”. By the time the interaction is over, the countertop before the pair is filled with empty glassware, and the doctor is intoxicated physically and figuratively. He is drunk on Nora’s story, almost hypnotized by her Siren-like seduction. She offers to “help” him, which he accepts. He follows Nora into a bathroom, where she can be seen bleeding down the back of her jacket. She turns and asks for his hand, then vigorously shakes it so much that he seems to go into a seizure. She approaches him with a light emanating from her mouth and kisses him. Well, “kiss” is a pretty grandiose term for the skin-to-skin configuration needed to transfer spirits from body to body. Luz is, simply put, a possession film.
Set up in a widescreen format, Luz has the detritus and flares of an old grindhouse reel. It’s vaguely set in the 1980s, based upon a few dated fashions and gadgets. Singer doesn’t lean on the throwback mood as a creative crutch, as so many of today’s nostalgia vehicles do. He sticks the landing without so much as a wink, and it works. The story is an intimate one, primarily taking place within two enclosed settings. Frequent usage of symmetrical hallways and extended corridors abound, echoing the demon’s inclinations to not only travel from host to host, but to ultimately roam the earth to his heart’s desire.
It’s a demonic possession story in which a demon inhabits corporeal vessels, true enough, but Luz takes great stock in the possession of the mind, as well. Hypnosis plays heavily into the narrative, making the paranormal movie more cerebral than visceral. After his spiritual connection with Nora, the now- possessed doctor interviews Luz after putting her into a hypnotic state. It’s Luana Velis’ moment to shine, both in physicality and command of the screen. Luz gives a pantomime play-by-play of her evening, audibly immersing us into her world and her night shift. We can hear the radio, and we clearly see Nora (as Luz remembers her) standing off to the side, where the curb would be. This mild interrogation sequence becomes congested with Bertillon and Olarte’s overlapping dialogue, as the duo play a linguistic game of telephone providing both translation and counsel back and forth with Doctor Rossini. The overcrowded interchange undercuts the impact of the reenactment, making it far less arresting than Nora’s story at film’s beginning. In the story’s defense, the demon present in the room doesn’t care for all of the crosstalk, either. But it takes the weight out of what should be a substantial moment in the story.
Fortunately, it picks right back up with a vengeance with Jan Bluthardt’s searing performance as Dr. Rossini. Bluthardt displays a quiet intensity not unlike Erwin Leder in Angst, a dark Austrian gem that easily could have been in the same cinematic universe as Luz. The plot’s ambiguity makes spoiler-free discussion difficult past this point, but it becomes evident that Luz is special, and this entity pursues her for a reason. Fair warning, the supernatural elements aren’t fully spelled out for viewers; Singer is one of the refreshing few genre directors who trusts his audience to interpret things for themselves, and it makes for a positively disorienting viewing experience.
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Luz
Summary
Fair warning, the supernatural elements aren’t fully spelled out for viewers; Singer is one of the refreshing few genre directors who trusts his audience to interpret things for themselves, and it makes for a positively disorienting viewing experience.
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