This acclaimed Austrian drama focuses on five months in the life of paedophile who keeps a 10-year-old boy locked in his basement.A protg of Michael Haneke, Markus Schleinzer's Michael is a triumph of uneasy cinema. With an unorthodox level of restraint, the director tells the story of a dull office drone who keeps a kidnapped young boy locked in his house.Despite its subversive edge, Michael successfully drains the shock out of a frightening premise and instead delivers a keen observational thriller. From its opening minutes, Michael reveals its alarming plot with... a patient, naturalistic atmosphere. [show more]
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Austrian drama examining the fraught dual existence of an outwardly respectable man who keeps a ten-year-old boy locked in his basement. Michael (Michael Fuith) appears to be an ordinary member of society. He holds down a steady, well-paid job, pays visits to his family and neighbours and maintains a clean and orderly house. However, unknown to his friends, Michael is a paedophile who keeps a young boy, Wolfgang (David Rauchenberger), in a furnished room in his basement. Though their respective roles of victim and abuser are clear, the duration of Wolfgang's captivity has led to a certain complexity developing in the relationship between the man and child. For all that Wolfgang loathes and resents Michael, he has also come to perceive him as his only human contact and source of company. Will the sanity of both survive the stresses that occur as Michael struggles to maintain his respectable facade?
A respectable man hides a monstrous secret in this harrowing drama from Austrian filmmaker Markus Schleinzer. Michael (Michael Fuith) is a seemingly average man in his mid-thirties who works for an insurance firm. He is good at his job, is friendly with his co-workers, gets along well with his siblings, and has a tidy home in the suburbs. But Michael is also a sexual predator obsessed with young boys, and he hides a ten-year-old child, Wolfgang (David Rauchenberger), in his cellar as his slave. He frequently tells Wolfgang that his parents don't want him back, and while he takes good care of the boy, he also forces the child to have sex with him whenever he wishes. Michael follows the title character's double life over the course of five months, as he presents the image of an ordinary man to the world during the day and gives free reign to his ugliest desires at night.
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