Admirably uncompromising depiction of what may or may not be its hero’s subconscious is intensely realised but not all that much fun to watch
By turns fetid and febrile, pyretic and putrid, and all things hot and sticky, this unique avant garde work is the result of a collaboration between writer-director Stefan Lernous and his colleagues at Abattoir Fermé, a theatre company based in the Belgian Flemish-speaking city of Mechelen. It has a plot, of sorts: there’s a guy named Dave who looks after his family’s supposedly empty hotel, an elaborate set full of rooms encrusted with mould, grot and dead stuff, all of it in the process of mulching down into one sludgy, semi-organic mass. Perhaps the title is a clue that this is all taking place in some para-aquatic terrain, which would explain the abundance of tridents and fishtanks and other watery kit.
Anyway, Dave...
By turns fetid and febrile, pyretic and putrid, and all things hot and sticky, this unique avant garde work is the result of a collaboration between writer-director Stefan Lernous and his colleagues at Abattoir Fermé, a theatre company based in the Belgian Flemish-speaking city of Mechelen. It has a plot, of sorts: there’s a guy named Dave who looks after his family’s supposedly empty hotel, an elaborate set full of rooms encrusted with mould, grot and dead stuff, all of it in the process of mulching down into one sludgy, semi-organic mass. Perhaps the title is a clue that this is all taking place in some para-aquatic terrain, which would explain the abundance of tridents and fishtanks and other watery kit.
Anyway, Dave...
- 12/28/2021
- by Leslie Felperin
- The Guardian - Film News
I’m not sure what I just saw. Was it surreal comedy in a setting that exudes sympathy puke aura? Was it a nightmarish horror sending us down a chaotic rabbit hole of insecurities, hopes, and inferiority? Perhaps a little of both? Either way, Stefan Lernous’ Hotel Poseidon throws any semblance of a narrative out the window with an opening scene that does nothing but rotate around the lobby of this derelict establishment to supply an ingenious title card explaining the film’s true star: its locale. The lights flicker, the coffee machine combusts, the tenants (read: squatters) do whatever they want, and someone might just be dismembering a body in the kitchen—but if anybody asks, he’s just doing “kitchen stuff.” And poor Dave (Tom Vermeir) simply wants to sleep.
How can he when his neighbor watches porn all day through the paper-thin walls? Or when his friend...
How can he when his neighbor watches porn all day through the paper-thin walls? Or when his friend...
- 8/15/2021
- by Jared Mobarak
- The Film Stage
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