"L'esprit du loup" or "A Wolf's Mind" is a co-production between France, Germany and Switzerland from 2016 and this may also explain the French title here. The director is Katia Scarton-Kim and basically everything she has worked on so far, which is not that much honestly, has had French titles. This is her second of so far three short films plus a full feature movie you can add to that as well. Probably still a relatively young filmmaker. If you take a look at the cast here, you will maybe not recognize any of the actors from their names or faces, but that does not mean they aren't enjoying pretty successful careers. This especially applies to Arndt Schwering-Sohnrey. He has worked with Tarantino (easy to see with his photo from a really memorable scene/movie), Cronenberg, Haneke only to mention a few and I will not even go into detail on some of the excellent actors in these movies. So definitely not undeserving that he finally gets to play a real lead character, even if it is just in a short film that runs for under 20 minutes. He also has the showiest part here, even if (or probably because) he is the bad guy, a really bad guy from the historic perspective indeed. You can check out the character name yourself. The good guy here is Fritz Lang, the really famous German filmmaker, and this film is set immediately after he came up with one of his most known works. He is played by Jochen Hägele and this fella has a pretty interesting body of work as well. he has been in French projects, Spanish projects, German projects, Finnish projects and many more. Also his most known works come from French directors, even if some of those films may have English-language titles. Audiard comes to mind immediately. of course, just like the other male actor in here, he usually only played fairly minor characters, so goof for him as well that he gets to be in the center for once, even if his material is not that baity. He does what he has to though. A quietly convincing performance. The one who completes the trio here is Gintare Parulyte, even if she is not as much in the center as the two guys, but I shall get to that later. She also already acted in films next to Scarlett Johansson for example.
This movie here is in black-and-white and as it is set almost 90 years in the past, that makes very much sense and is also a stylistically wise choice, of course also because almost everything by Fritz Lang is in black-and-white as well. Definitely no coincidence and I thought it was a good decision, but then again, I like b&w films in general, so certainly a bit biased here. Still, this movie that has its fifth anniversary in summer this year (maybe it happened already when you read my review if you don't show up here immediately), and this makes it still a relatively recent film. As a big film buff myself, I am always curious about film on film like this one here and even if it is not depicting the making of a movie or anything really, the name Lang is enough to say it fits the description. This film really flew by for me. It is not long at alll, but felt even shorter like ten minutes only or something. The most haunting shot was probably the one at the ending with the female character in tears. Many ways for interpretation there. For once you could say it depicted the fake happiness of Nazi Germany, but behind the scenes there were all kinds of suffering and harm and you know the woman was not there because she wanted to. She was there because she was forced to or maybe also because she agreed to dedicate her craft to the leaders, something Lang in here also has to consider and if he does, he may end up as unhappy as the lady. Certainly not a coincidence that this is what I remembered the most here. It was meant this way. I also liked the brief explanation of words on the screen before the closing credits roll in. It offers nice closure. Of course, this is a fictitious film because, even if such a meeting may have taken place, then we do not know what they said exactly. Surely not what we see here. But the dialogue writing makes sense in my opinion. The actors also did a fine job for sure, all three of them. Just for very different reasons and from pretty different perspective. Due to the small cast and everything taking place at the same location, this is also a good film to turn into a stage play perhaps. It may not be great, but I give it a thumbs-up for sure. No reason not to. Watch if you get the chance to catch it.
This movie here is in black-and-white and as it is set almost 90 years in the past, that makes very much sense and is also a stylistically wise choice, of course also because almost everything by Fritz Lang is in black-and-white as well. Definitely no coincidence and I thought it was a good decision, but then again, I like b&w films in general, so certainly a bit biased here. Still, this movie that has its fifth anniversary in summer this year (maybe it happened already when you read my review if you don't show up here immediately), and this makes it still a relatively recent film. As a big film buff myself, I am always curious about film on film like this one here and even if it is not depicting the making of a movie or anything really, the name Lang is enough to say it fits the description. This film really flew by for me. It is not long at alll, but felt even shorter like ten minutes only or something. The most haunting shot was probably the one at the ending with the female character in tears. Many ways for interpretation there. For once you could say it depicted the fake happiness of Nazi Germany, but behind the scenes there were all kinds of suffering and harm and you know the woman was not there because she wanted to. She was there because she was forced to or maybe also because she agreed to dedicate her craft to the leaders, something Lang in here also has to consider and if he does, he may end up as unhappy as the lady. Certainly not a coincidence that this is what I remembered the most here. It was meant this way. I also liked the brief explanation of words on the screen before the closing credits roll in. It offers nice closure. Of course, this is a fictitious film because, even if such a meeting may have taken place, then we do not know what they said exactly. Surely not what we see here. But the dialogue writing makes sense in my opinion. The actors also did a fine job for sure, all three of them. Just for very different reasons and from pretty different perspective. Due to the small cast and everything taking place at the same location, this is also a good film to turn into a stage play perhaps. It may not be great, but I give it a thumbs-up for sure. No reason not to. Watch if you get the chance to catch it.