Michael (2011)
Directed by Markus Schleinzer
Although to the outside world he seems like a perfectly normal insurance broker, Michael secretly keeps a 10-year-old boy locked in a room in his soundproof basement.
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What critics compared Michael to
Just as fantastical fairytales so often unpick the conflicts of family life, so Room owes less to the lurid legacy of the Josef Fritzl case (or to films such as Markus Schleinzer’s Michael ) than to the more everyday experiences of women and children who rise above domestic abuse.
Look to Markus Schleinzer’s excellent Michael for detailed explanations as to how such a man might manage the detention of an unwilling stranger.
They include ominous descents into dark basements, which, as we know, have played a certain baleful role in recent Austrian history (see Markus Schleinzer’s Michael).
But unlike last year’s festival inclusion Michael, from Austrian director Markus Schleinzer, Jagten or The Hunt in my mother tongue, takes a more subtle approach to the considerably dangerous material, exploring lead character Lucas’ accusation as a harrowing situational horror that crawls under the audiences skin and which is profoundly successful as a slow-burning drama with a biting edge.