Ulrich Seidl’s “Import Export”

The Austrian director Ulrich Seidl brought to this year’s Cannes Film Festival his latest movie called “Import Export”, which is showing the grey part of life, speaking about exploitation and degradation.
“Import Export” tells two stories: the story of the young Ukrainian nurse Olga, who has left her child behind for seeking a better life in Austria, and the story of Paul, an average Austrian guy, who will lose his job as a security guard.
The movie was shot in a flat, almost having the style of a documentary. It portrays the casual brutality and cruelty meat at the bottom classes of the Austrian society, represented by the immigrant workers like the Ukrainian nurse Olga and the Austrian misfits like Paul.
The Austrian director said that he was not aiming to entertain people with his movies. He would like to touch them and, “perhaps even disturb them”.
“Import Export” joins “4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days”, the Romanian director Cristian Mungiu’s film, as they are both “capturing the crushing ugliness of life in the Eastern bloc”. These movies add a bleak note to the main style of the movies competing at the Cannes Film Festival.
Olga is played by Ekatarina Rak, a former nurse herself. Olga tries to earn some money as an Internet sex worker, but as she won’t be able to escape poverty, she will try her luck in Austria.
On the other hand, Paul is broke and he needs to join his father-in-law in delivering second hand slot machine to Ukraine. Here they will drink heavily and have a shocking encounter with a local girl. Paul is played by Paul Hofmann.
Neither of the two main characters has appeared in a movie before, but they are both very convincing in their roles. Ekatarina Rak hadn’t ever been to Western Europe till her coming to the Cannes Film Festival.
Seidl have been accused that he exploited “the actors” from the movie in sexual scenes or episodes that were set in wards of incontinent or dying geriatric patients. The director hasn’t been, however, moved by these accusations.
The movie has its moments of bitter comedy, but its ending has the appropriate somber tone as one of the dying women in the ward where Olga works: “Dead, dead, dead”… [And the image fades out.]

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