Import/Export (2007)

User Rating:

7.5/10   

Director:

Ulrich Seidl

Writers:

Veronika Franz (writer)
Ulrich Seidl (writer)

Release Date:

11 October 2007 (Czech Republic)

Genre:

Drama

Plot:

A nurse from the Ukraine searches for a better life in the West, while an unemployed security guard from Austria heads East for the same reason. |

Plot Keywords:

Nurse | Security Guard | Sexual Dominance | Cleaning Lady | Stepfather Adult Stepson Relationship

Awards:

1 win & 1 nomination

Cast

Ekateryna Rak	...	Olga
Paul Hofmann	...	Pauli
Michael Thomas	...	Michael
Maria Hofstätter	...	Schwester Maria
Georg Friedrich	...	Pfleger Andi
Natalya Baranova	...	Olgas Freundin - Ukraine (as Natalja)
Natalja Epureanu	...	Olgas Freundin
Erich Finsches	...	Erich Schlager
rest of cast listed alphabetically:
Herbert Fritsch	...	Paulis Vater
Susanne Lothar	...	Paulis Mutter
Petra Morzé	...	Mother in Family Home
Thomas Nash
Dirk Stermann	...	Ausbilder für Putzfrauen

Runtime:

141 min | South Korea:123 min | Germany:135 min

Country:

Austria

Language:

German | Slovak | Russian | English

Colour:

Colour

Aspect Ratio:

1.66 : 1

Sound Mix:

Dolby SR

Certification:

Czech Republic:15 | Germany:16 | Hong Kong:III | Sweden:15 | Netherlands:12 | South Korea:15 | UK:18 | Australia:R | France:-16

Filming Locations:

Vienna, Austria

Company:

Ulrich Seidl Film Produktion GmbH

Movie Connections:

Featured in "Metropolis: Cannes 2007 - Special" (2007)

Death and Money

I saw this movie in London on a Friday night in October at a point when the world's finances were in meltdown and the FTSE had lost 9% of its value in one day. So what? So everything... This film couldn't have been more apposite; Import Export is all about capitalism - and cash. Having it. Not having it. And the humiliations most people must undergo just to stay afloat.

And, as it turns out in this movie, the real heroes of the piece are the 'losers' West and East, but particularly the latter; losers who may have few chips to bet in capitalism's little crap game, but ones who haven't yet forgotten their humanity.

In particular Olga, the Ukrainian nurse who travels to the West only to absorb one humiliation after another. In a series of beautiful scenes in the Geriatric hospital in Vienna where she now works as a cleaner - we see her variously comb the hair of a demented inmate before a nurse tell her it's against the rules, plug in a phone and sing a lullaby to her baby a thousand miles to the East, dance tenderly with a dying patient in a basement storeroom and later go to the 'Exitus' to make a last vigil over his body, a moment of almost religious intensity...

Interwoven with her story, is that of Pauli who makes the journey in the opposite direction, ending up in the Ukraine with his debased and alcoholic step-father, a pathetic and impotent racist whose behaviour reminded me strongly of the SS invaders in the climactic scene of Elim Klimov's Come and See. A man whose debasement is a cypher for the moral emptiness of the West. For money, he gets a prostitute, naked from the waist down, to crawl round on her hands and knees while telling her to repeat, in German, a language she doesn't understand, that she's a 'stupid f**king c**t'.

The power of money. The only thing he understands...

Pauli finally tries to 'defect' to the East. But even there the system is now dog eat dog so he leaves his step-father and begins to hitch-hike back. Meanwhile, at the hospital, the cleaners, ladies from the East all, sit in their overalls around a dinner table and share a joke. And laugh and laugh and laugh.

Their spirit is not dead. It's the real power of the downtrodden. Everywhere.