Bad Luck
Director: Thomas Woschitz
Writer: Thomas Woschitz
Cast: Josef Smretschnig, Thomas Oraze, Valerie Pachner, Christian Zankl, Gerhard Kubelka
Seen on: 11.6.2015

Plot:
Karl (Josef Smretschnig) barely gets by with his job as a mechanic, so when he and local weirdo Rizzo (Christian Zankl) happen to see a car fall out of the sky and happen to find not only a dead woman in it, but also a bag of cash, Karl makes a judgment call, grabs the money and leaves the body. At the same time, Lippo (Thomas Oraze) has the rug pulled out from under him: he’s been working his job at the local bookie for years and suddenly his boss kicks him out. Dagmar (Valerie Pachner), too, finds herself kicked out – of her apartment. Now she’s at work at the gas station, where all of their stories intersect.

Bad Luck was alright but it didn’t blow me away – for that it was trying a little too obviously and a little too hard.

I like omnibus movies or episodic movies or whatever you want to call it: movies that start in different places with different characters and bit and bit you realize how it all fits and comes together. Bad Luck is one of those films and with that it already had a plus right before it started. But unfortunately the film itself can’t quite keep the promise of the concept.

One problem was that the story just didn’t come together naturally for me but felt extremely constructed. Of course I realize that every script is constructed and that a lot of work has to go and goes into every story, but in this case it just felt forced. You could still see the stitches were the parts were joined together – I was hoping for something a little more seamless.

Other problems I had was that the film works with a voice over and starts with the end, telling the rest of the story basically as a flashback – both are often used ways of story telling and I’m not a fan of either of the concepts.

What I did like was that film – set in Carinthia – worked exclusively with the (very distinct) Carinthian dialect. That is certainly also to do with the fact that most of the actors were amateurs who just happened to live in the area were the film was shot. It meant that their acting might not have been the best, but it worked for the characters. Speaking of characters: what I also liked was that in Rizzo we got a character who is straddling the line between just a little weird and actually disabled – it is rare to get characters like that, even though people like that aren’t rare and it’s good to see them every once in a while in a film.

But altogether the film fell a little flat for me. I would like to have liked it better.

Summarizing: okay.