Models (1999)

Recommended

Austria

Feature Film

Writer/Director: Ulrich Seidl

Cinematographers: Ortrun Bauer, Jerzy Palacz, Hans Selikovsky

Cast: Vivian Bartsch, Tanja Petrovsky, Lisa Grossmann, Elvyra Geyer, Werner Hotzy, Michael Dürr, Andreas Herrmann

Notorious documentarian Seidl’s fiction feature film debut sees him taking an unflinching look at the world of struggling models; a world filled with casual sex, drugs, eating disorders, and vomit-flecked toilet bowls, which occasionally is as clichéd as it may sound, but the Austrian film-maker manages to find relevance in the work by hinting at the humanity that lurks just below the surface of their shallow, frivolous existence. Iain.Stott