01/09/2025 - VENICE 2025: Gastón Solnicki takes us on a tour of Vienna’s Intercontinental Hotel with Willem Dafoe as our guide

A much-anticipated addition to this year’s Venice Orizzonti line-up, The Souffleur is Argentinian director Gastón Solnicki’s follow-up to his wondrous city symphony from 2022 A Little Love Package [+see also:
film review
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film profile]. The Souffleur is another ode to his city of residence, Vienna, this time centred on the infamous luxury Intercontinental Hotel at the heart of the Austrian capital. Solnicki himself stars as the looming new buyer, Facundo Ordoñez, who comes to haunt the film’s protagonist, Lucius (Willem Dafoe), the longstanding hotel manager. Not only has Lucius tended to the Intercontinental as a guardian, but there is something proprietary and familial in the way he roams around back rooms, service elevators, kitchens and breakfast restaurants outside of working hours. For a hotel manager of his kind, there is no separation between work and leisure, especially since his daughter Lilly (Lilly Lindner) works with him.

In the opening scene, a close-up sees a soufflé swell through an oven-door window, to later find its place at the breakfast table where Lucius and his executive Claus (Claus Philipp) are discussing the hotel sale over coffee. “It’s not right,” the manager exclaims, but we have a feeling he’s railing against something else, not the soufflé. For the movie’s short running time (a slim 78 minutes), Solnicki prefers to take us on detours in and out of the Intercontinental, with and without Lucius, exploring the Stadtpark close by and its tennis courts, as well as the hotel’s ice rink down below and the rooftops up above. One scene early on sees him looking down from behind the “Intercontinental” sign upon a beautiful panorama of the city – a rare sight to see and a small gift to the audience.

In this way, the film’s pathos is not restricted by the hotel walls, but a curious sense of wonder leads the viewer to places they probably don’t know (unless they reside in Vienna or have attended the Viennale), countering the puzzling newness of a closed location with a quirky sort of charm. Dafoe is as enigmatic as ever, working hard to conceal a great deal, rather than reveal anything about his character. In a way, this gesture is a nod to the hotel and its staff, regardless of whether or not he succeeds in rendering his star persona invisible throughout the film.

Even so, it’s somewhat difficult to let yourself relax into the film’s atmosphere owing to its tonal fluctuations. What seems at first to be a promise of easy access to its sentimental core often turns out to be deceiving; a viewer seeking a saturated emotional space might find The Souffleur to be a bit resistant – many tableau scenes serve to undercut that very possibility, and a generous way of reading their intent is to keep one at arm’s length. Nobody, not even the audience, can afford to get too comfortable with the way corporations tear through the cultural fabric of a city.

The Souffleur is an Austrian-Argentinian co-production staged by Little Magnet Films, Filmy Wiktora, Primo and KGP Filmproduktion, with Magnify handling its sales worldwide.