The Ground Beneath My Feet

Lola is a consultant; she works sixty hour weeks, changes cities by plane, trains at five in the morning and lets nothing slip. Nobody knows she has a sister. Conny is in a psychiatric clinic and her condition is severe. Lola hides this from her professional world. Then the calls from her sister increase. As she tries to hide the calls her own perception begins to slip and she cannot be sure what is really happening. Marie Kreutzer writes and directs. Valerie Pachner plays Lola. It is an Austrian production and screened in the main competition of the Berlin film festival in 2019. The subject is the order of work itself. The competition in consultancy, constant measurement and the prohibition on showing weakness are given in detail; that is why Lola hides her sister. At a certain point the narrative loses its reliability; the viewer, like Lola, cannot tell what is real, and the film does not explain it. The visual language is cold: glass offices, hotel rooms, airports and cities that all look the same. Valerie Pachner's performance is built on a physical exhaustion. Who it is for: viewers who follow European psychological drama and narratives about the working world. Who it is not for: it is cold, the pace is slow, and the narrative answers no question clearly.