Lovely Rita
Director: Jessica Hausner
Writer: Jessica Hausner
Cast: Barbara Osika, Christoph Bauer, Peter Fiala, Wolfgang Kostal, Karina Brandlmayer
Seen on: 23.6.2025

Plot:
Rita (Barbara Osika) is lonely. Bullied at school, her parents (Wolfgang Kostal, Karina Brandlmayer) don’t pay much attention to her unless she does something wrong – and pretty much everything she does is wrong somehow. She connects with Fexi (Christoph Bauer) , a neighborhood boy about her age, and tries to flirt with the bus driver (Peter Fiala) who drives the bus that takes her to school. But as her world becomes narrower and narrower, Rita plans a drastic escape.

Lovely Rita is Hausner’s debut and shows much of what is to come in Hausner’s work. I connected with Lovely Rita more than with other films of Hausner’s, but didn’t like the turn the story takes.

Lovely Rita is evocative when it comes to showing just how harsh Rita’s life is, just how devoid of any kind of affection. The only moments of warmth happen between Rita and Fexi, and it is painfully obvious that Rita doesn’t really know what to do with that warm feeling. Hausner has a good eye for the small details and shows just enough that we get the picture without ever making anything explicit.

The trouble starts when the story goes from the distressing but mundane portrayal of a cold life to a more extreme turn of events. This felt uncalled for, unfitting. In short, the movie didn’t manage to capture Rita’s motivations, or maybe her despair, enough to make what happens plausible to the viewers.

I would have preferred it, if the film has stayed within normalcy, and if it maybe had even found some way to give Rita some hope, something to hold on to. Because bleakness is pretty one-sided, there is always more to life than just the bad things, even if we can’t see it in any given moment.

I haven’t seen much of Hausner’s work, but both Amour Fou and Little Joe didn’t really work for me. Of the three, Lovely Rita might still be my favorite, but it, too, is not a movie I actually liked a whole lot.

Summarizing: not for me.