AUN: The Beginning and the End of All Things is the newest film by Edgar Honetschläger, starring Yûki Hiyori, Rosane Mulholland, Yôsuke Saitô and William Ferreira.

Plot (I’ll just copy part of the official description because the film is very hard to sum up):
The Japanese scientist Sekai [=the world] (Yôsuke Saitô), seeking a bright future for mankind, invents a motor that burns water. His wife Hikari [=the light], dies when giving birth to their son Aun [the beginning and the end of all things] (Yûki Hiyori). As a toddler Aun discovers an unusual sea snail at the beach. Sekai uses it for experiments involving his own body, which ultimately kills him. Twenty years later Euclides [=number theorist] (William Ferreira), a deaf scientist from Brazil’s capitol – the modernist Brasília – carries on Sekai’s experiments. He believes the sea snail to be the missing link to a livable future and therefore asks his wife Nympha [=pupal stage of butterfly] (Rosane Mulholland) to find Aun.

AUN is a bit of a mindfuck. It doesn’t make much sense, it’s extremely absurd and bizarre, which could have been okay. Unfortunately it was also rather boring and I couldn’t help but fall asleep.

I have to admit that I didn’t know much about the fim going in. I just heard that it was an Austrian-Japanese SciFi/Fantasy film and was sure I wanted to see it, no matter what it was. Even though I was afraid that the film would maybe get a bit more esoteric than I would like it to be (admittedly, that threshold is very low with me).

But the film was pretty much every stereotype of an arthouse film ever: full with non-sequiturs, generally low on the logic (at least for somebody who didn’t read up on the intentions of the director well ahead of the film) and full of details that just made you go “huh?” but can be interpreted ad nauseam.

Films like that can be very entertaining – Kaboom is a perfect example for that. Unfortunately AUN never really managed to pull me into this world and when I fell asleep halfway through the film, it didn’t help things either. Admittedly I might have missed the most crucial moments during that time, but somehow I doubt it.

There just was no relatable character or anything else to hold on to. And without that, no film will really work.

Summarising: If you like artsy absurdity, go for it.