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SMALL TOWN INTRIGUE IN HEAD UNDER WATER
06/09/2007
In a small, idyllic town in Germany, young Rico (Frederick Lau) is bullied by Robert, the star of their high school swim team, who dies from a poisoned éclair meant for the former. Was it murder? An allergic reaction? Why is the school principal afraid of the police investigation? And what is art teacher Martin (August Diehl) hiding in his house?
Andreas Kleinert’s Head Under Water (Freischwimmer) starts out looking like a typical US high school genre film before “the story grows darker and more Kafkaesque, slowly transforming into something European and crossing many genres,” says the director.
As other murders start to take place it becomes clear that the peace and quiet of this small town is tied to one of the film’s main themes. Rico is virtually deaf without his hearing aid and when he takes it off we hear only the muffled sounds he hears, while Martin is working on a secret art project on silence that not even his girlfriend is allowed to see. They are both outsiders seeking silence from a society that does not accept them and thus become suspects in the crimes.
Lau says it was relatively easy for him to prepare for his role: “I’ve always observed outsiders, and understanding them just means opening our eyes and asking ourselves how they live and what they feel in their exclusion.”
Under the sunny skies of this “anytown,” the story’s disturbing climax is revealed just moments before the film’s end, and after the only truly decent character has been sacrificed as well. This, says the television and film director, is the film’s strongest message: “You cannot survive if you are good in this world. Every one of us has a dark side that we don’t reveal because of [social] convention, and in life you have to compromise certain parts of your soul to fit in, until you ultimately lose all that is good.”
The film’s impressive, stark yet color-saturated photography (further manipulated in post-production) belies its €1.5m budget, something Kleinert is proud of seeing as how the filmmakers had to settle for half for the budget they originally wanted.
Natasha Senjanovic
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