Losses to Be Expected (1993) User Reviews

The losses turned out better than expected

[serge-fenenko · 7/10 · 15 November 2004]

When I started watching Losses to be Expected, I didn't know it was from the same director as Hundstage. But after the very first striptease scene I knew it had to be Ulrich Seidl. He has a unique talent of revealing common patterns in the human behavior, and he is the master of depressing cinema. After watching Hundstage and La Pianiste van Haneke within one week, I have even decided to never watch an Austrian movie again. But this one is a good excuse to break the promise.

The main character of the documentary is the 60+ retired Austrian who's just lost his wife and is looking for a new one across the Austrian-Czech border. He is very lonely and needs somebody to share his last years with. He uses all the tricks to lure Paula, who lives in Czech Republic, into his nets. He shows her an Austrian supermarket, an Austrian shopping mall, takes her to a fair in the nearby town etc. Whatever the characters do is so recognizable, beginning with a conversation of the 60+ widows about the sex, and ending with complaints of a village idiot about the communists who failed to repaired his window and cupboard.

I liked the movie for its almost transcendental spirit, although I would cut it back from 120 to 90 minutes to keep the pace and to let it gradually grow to the climax. And I would definitely stop after the second striptease scene performed by the village idiot. But Ulrich didn't and kept repeating his scenes and ideas.

I have no idea why, but it is working

[Horst_In_Translation · 6/10 · 3 April 2017]

"Mit Verlust ist zu rechnen" is a 110-minute Austrian film from 1992, so this one has its 25th anniversary this year. It is a mix of German and Czech language because of the origins of the two protagonists in here, so you will most likely need subtitles unless you are really fluent in both languages. This film was made by writer and director Ulrich Seidl relatively early in his career and the late Michael Glawogger, who co-wrote the script and for the latter it is one of his very early career works actually. Both can be considered among the most influential Austrian filmmakers of the last 25 years. As for Seidl, films about the Auustrian border to other countries, mostly Eastern Europe, are a common subject ("Import Export") or you could maybe even say films with culture clash between Austrian and other civilizations ("Paradies: Liebe") and here we see that this was also already true when Seidl was around the age of 40.

But this one here is no fiction apparently. It is a documentary about two relatively lonely people finding love at the other side of the border and taking into account that it was only 3 years back in 1992 since the Fall of the Berlin Wall, this adds another completely new component to it. As for the film in general, this is typical Seidl really. It's weird, it's awkward, but it's also very deep and it's really difficult to put it into words why it is actually working. I think that it is because the characters are normal, very normal, and that's a positive aspect in the overall context probably. They may not be particularly interesting, but they have their flaws and they feel incredibly authentic. Seidl definitely has a strength in depicting stuff like that and it makes me hope that he will make another documentary at some point in the future again, even if I also like his fictitious works that admittedly also always have a touch of documentary to them. I think Seidl is probably one of the most human filmmakers of our time because of the way he depicts humans exactly like they are. There is not a single scene in his films, even the most dramatic ones, that feel contrived or fake and this is a huge positive deal-breaker. The final song is a thing of beauty too and summarizes the film nicely in one scene with the lyrics and visual side. I recommend "Loss Is to Be Expected". Even back in the early 1990s, Seidl knew very well what he was doing. Go check it out.