Slumming

Glawogger’s intriguing return to narrative features (following a series of impressive documentaries, ‘Megacities’, ‘Workingman’s Death’ among them) examines middle/upper-class ennui, with a ‘Rope’-lite story following the antics of a pair of rich Vienna students who progress from taking ‘snatch’ shots of unsuspecting girls, buying flowers for blind musicians, to a final jape – transporting a sleeping tramp (Manker)in their limo’s boot  from outside the main station to the Czech border town of Znojmo. Ably shot (by Martin Gschlacht, often on location) and  well-performed and observed, ‘Slumming’, initially manifests an interesting and unsentimental impassivity and moral neutrality before succumbing to a more-or-less orthodox story of redemption through love. Impressive all the same. Co-written by Barbara Albert (whose own ‘Falling’ shows on Sun & Mon.)