Scene from the film Models
Scene from the film Models
Scene from the film Models

Models

Direction
Year 
1998
Country
  • Austria
Duration
118min 
Audio Tracks 
Subtitles 

Vivian has a partner and several lovers. She's afraid of cellulites; they say her breasts are too small. Lisa only has sex with black guys, her nights are long cocaine parties, she lives alone and she cannot be alone. For a long time now, Tanja likes animals better than people, she has her fortune told from cards and she balances her life through yoga. She could not ever tell ‘I love you' to anyone.

Completely obsessed with their own bodies, the three blonds work on their careers, beauty machines that go from one audition to another. Genitals and success are the centerpieces of their lives; they can spend hours dreaming about it on the telephone with their girlfriends and a constantly changing variety of men. The film adapts to the video clip character of their lives, it follows the quick sequences of life in an extremely competitive business where there are no scruples and where the tiniest imperfection of the body can lead to elimination.

The girls do not only fight their competitors, they have an ambivalent relationship with their bodies, they face problems with sex, bulimia and drugs. They transform into incredibly insensitive beings, super soft females who live only for the moment. Vivan, most of all, is a female chameleon. Sometimes it is hard to recognize here even in two following shots. In an effort to conform to the latest trends, she represents the metamorphoses of her face, its unoriginal character.

The director tried to get into an enclosed community. But he could not make a standard documentary in the controlled environment. Let's say his film is another illustration of documentarism. Moreover, he had to get three models into the film who would be willing to talk, transform, and reduce their bodies to a physical possibility, to a mere vibration of the outer bodily features according the director's intentions. The secondary level is the film's true phenomenon; to Seidl, the sexual life of the women is an ever-unmerciful social realism.

It is Seidl's obsession to show the perfect loneliness, the intimacy of no escape. Models without identities are perfect material for long centered shots of situations, studios, nightclubs and toilets covered in vomit. Because what is consumed must be vomited: zum Star macht!

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Details

  • Original title
    Models
  • Direction
  • Screenplay
    Ulrich Seidl
  • DOP
    Hans Selikovsky, Jerzy Palacz
  • Editing
    Christof Schertenleib
  • Sound
    Ekkehart Baumung, Helmuth Junker, Bruno Pisek
  • Duration
    118 min (91+ min.)
  • Year
    1998
  • Country
    • Austria
  • Production

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