Free game (movie)

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Movie
Original title Free spin
Country of production Austria
original language German
Publishing year 1995
length 94 minutes
Rod
Director Harald Sicherheitsitz
script Harald Sicherheitsitz, Alfred Dorfer
production Heinz Scheiderbauer , Scheiderbauer Film
music Peter Herrmann , Peter Janda , Lothar Scherpe
camera Helmut Pirnat
cut Ingrid Koller
occupation

Free Game is an Austrian film from 1995.

action

In free play , the viewer can experience the midlife crisis of music professor Robert Brenneis. He teaches at a grammar school in Vienna and dreams of being a pop star like his former school friend Roland Pokorny.

Brenneis is senior teacher in music at a high school. He's more or less unlucky. Every morning on the way to school he does the same routine, which is only interrupted by a coffee and a pinball game in a coffee house.

The music lessons are rather slow and stoic, his students show little interest in the lessons and dance on his nose. A student tries suicide because of a math decision test in the school building, but it fails.

At home Robert works on his music, but he doesn't really want to succeed. His wife Doris works for the Schindler artist agency. The boss regularly charms her, and when Robert looks out the window while playing the guitar, he sees Doris in the car with Schindler and reacts jealously.

His son Michael is also not that fond of his father. He reveals himself to his mother and tells her that he is in love with his classmate Tina, but she has turned him off because of a new friend. The father only experiences this incidentally.

Doris and Robert are invited to Schindler's garden party. Brenneis is reluctant to go with them and is less impressed by the society there. Lily, a colleague of Doris (who also has a crush on Robert), plays Robert's tape and songs for the audience. Schindler interrupts this immediately because he is not interested in Robert's songs. Brenneis gets mad and leaves the party.

The director of the high school rejects Brenneis' pragmatization because he does not face the college and the director. A colleague who has not been employed at school for as long as he has been given priority and is pragmatized.

Robert is not in the holiday mood, but when his son Michael wants to travel alone, he agrees to Doris' vacation plans. The journey goes to Lignano . There, however, his mood quickly deteriorated again due to the heat and he traveled home early by train. Doris spends the vacation alone in Lignano, where she suffers a few pranks, stupid turn-ons from a gentleman and almost flirtation with a young Italian with whom she talks about Robert Musil .

In Carinthia, Robert decides at short notice to visit his billiards friend Reinhard, who has severe back pain, in the (fictional) spa town of Bad Loiperskamm . You take a joyride and finally end up at a boozy party in a beer tent. There Brenneis first flirts with the waitress before playing a weird song on stage, for which he is whistled and even beaten up.

Back in Vienna, Lilly (who is supposed to water the flowers in the apartment) meets Brenneis, who has returned home early, and flirts with him violently, but there is no more than one kiss, as both are interrupted by a call from Doris. Brenneis has been going through a metamorphosis since his homecoming , he shaves off his beard and changes his sloppy, inconspicuous clothes for jeans, western boots and leather jacket. When he leaves the apartment quickly, he tips an almost empty glass of milk on the couch, which leaves an ambiguous trail. On the same evening, the new, self-confident Robert Brenneis meets Lilly at the Roland Pokorny concert, but after that they both go their separate ways.

Brenneis makes it into the band's dressing room after the concert. Pokorny and Brenneis meet again after a long time and go to a private party through Vienna at night. The slimy agency boss Schindler is also dismissed as a “retoru carriage” by Robert, because he “has the fullest confidence in Mr. Pokorny”. In addition to alcohol consumption, there is also drug consumption and wild, sexual debauchery by the illustrious party guests at the party. Together Robert and Roland play a song that they composed years ago and which is also well received by the party guests. When the two of them meet again, many old and new topics are dealt with verbally. When looking for a toilet, both of them get lost on the roof of the house. There the discussions slowly develop into a controversial topic and the situation escalates. Due to an attack by Robert, they break through the barriers and slide down the sloping roof together, but can catch themselves shortly before the fall and get back into the apartment through a window. It only strengthened their friendship.

Doris, who has meanwhile returned home, discovers the remains of Robert and Lilly's dinner, the mess in the apartment and the dried up remains of a “white liquid” on the couch. Doris rhymes a few things, opens a bottle of whiskey, begins to get drunk, ravages the apartment and, in a maddened jealousy, destroys Robert's guitar collection. Then she falls asleep on a sofa, drunk and exhausted.

The night is slowly coming to an end and at dawn Robert and Roland make it to the coffee house where Robert usually plays with the pinball machine. Some last wisdom is exchanged and Robert finally manages a free game when Pokorny's manager rushes in and reminds Roland of his duties and takes him away. Robert has declined an offer to work and tour together and is happy with it.

Doris wakes up with a hangover, sits down on the other couch and finds the cause of the dried up white liquid: a fallen milk glass and bursts into laughter. At the same moment Robert comes home from his nocturnal tour and comments on the chaos in the apartment with the words: "were looking for something ...?" Doris and Robert know that they still love and kiss each other.

The plumber accidentally tears down the wall of the Brenneis apartment and the foreman scolds his employee as a fool. The "new" Brenneis takes it all calmly and asks the craftsmen for a schnapps in the apartment.

In the credits of the film, the actors and the staff take turns dancing the tango .

Production notes

The film was shot in summer 1995 in Vienna, Lower Austria, Carinthia and Northern Italy. Johannes Palha was responsible for the sound, while Ernst Braunias was responsible for the production design . Production manager was Gerhard Hannak . The film, produced in 35 mm format , was funded by the Vienna Film Fund and the Austrian Film Institute . The ORF took part in the production as part of the film / television agreement . The film, which is being distributed by the Filmladen , had its cinema premiere in Austria on October 6, 1995.

Reviews

  • Reinhard Tramontana wrote in the news magazine Profil that the film lacks substance for a tragic comedy like India , but the film is an "sometimes very witty frustration farce", the "largely well-oiled dialogues" contained some "clever" observations.
  • The courier said that the claim to make an Austrian Woody Allen film had failed: "Where the city ​​neurotic lets five punchlines per situation fizzle out, Dorfer has to be modest with just under half."
  • The Salzburger Nachrichten attests to the film that it was “a little too moralizing”. Alfred Dorfer, however, shines as a “sarcastic desperado” and Lukas Resetarits is “a brilliant beer tent howler”.

Award

In 1996 Frepiel received a Romy as the most successful Austrian film of the year .

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