Breathing (Atmen)

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Movie Details

• Genre: Drama
• Release Date: 2012-08-31 NY
• Running Time: 90 min.
• Director: Karl Markovics
• Cast: Thomas Schubert, Karin Lischka, Gerhard Liebmann, Georg Friedrich, Stefan Matousch, Georg Veitl, Klaus Rott, Luna Mijovic, Reinhold G. Moritz, Martin Oberhauser
• Producers: Dieter Pochlatko, Nikolaus Wisiak
• Writer: Karl Markovics
• Distributor: Kino Lorber Films
• Official Site: Breathing (Atmen) Official Site

A film of unreconciled impulses, Breathing is by turns vaguely sentimental and cooly detached in a manner that's ultimately more off-putting than it is complementary. In one scene, an undertaker wins €10 from a colleague after correctly guessing that our protagonist, a juvenile delinquent named Roman (Thomas Schubert) forced to work in a morgue as part of his parole conditions, has seen a dead body before. Others are set to jazzy bass lines that simply don't jibe with the monochrome visuals. The early-morning blue in which much of this Vienna-set film is bathed works well as a mood-setter, but too many of the actual events onscreen are either superfluous accentuations of that mood or unconvincing departures from it. Writer-director Karl Markovics aims for self-aware humbleness but lands quite a bit closer to blandness instead. At times the peripheral relationship between Roman and his parole officer calls to mind a similar dynamic in Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne's The Son, minus the allegorical heft-- --a flatness that, while hardly objectionable, still feels like a missed opportunity. That said, there is an extended shot of Roman walking parallel to a moving train–- the initial backward thrust, then the lurch forward-- that's as well-crafted as it is gently affecting. It's as though Breathing's intended balance between simplicity and emotional resonance got bottled up into one brief scene instead of evenly dispersed throughout.