20/05/2005

Sleeper (Schläfer), Benjamin Heisenberg’s first feature —also in competition for the Caméra d’Or— deals with the complexity of human relationships, envisaged like dysfunctional triangles, à la René Girard.
The film starts with the arrival of Johannes (Bastian Trost), a scientific researcher who is shown to his new lab by his colleague Farid (Mehdi Nebbou), an Algerian scientist on which the secret services asked Johannes to report, for they suspect him to be a sleeper spy for a organisation of terrorists. An ambiguous friendship starts between the two men; it is complicated by their meeting Beate (Loretta Pflaum), with whom they make a strange ménage à trois tainted with desire and jealousy, for the difference between friendship and betrayal is not so clear-cut.

In this film, relationships are never direct; they are always mediated by the presence of a third party (Beate, Mrs Wasser —of the secret services—, and the head of the lab). It seems that in life, triangles can never be equilateral but rather isosceles: like in the video games through which the two main protagonists confront each other, it is all about strategy and things are never even. From the very beginning, the director shows that when two people meet, not only friendship but also antagonisms ensue —which is probably why Farid is puzzled in this respect and owes quite a few books on ‘ How to make friends’ to try and sort this out. To emphasize the ambiguity, Heisenberg films his characters in an unintrusive way so we never know what they really think.

Sleeper is definitely an artistic project, an ‘open work’ where only questions are asked, and never answered. As the director himself says, it represents a new trend in German cinema which ‘in the 80’s and early 90’s, was trying to make very American, mainstream commercial films.’ For that matter, this film was co-produced by two production companies very committed to promoting quality films in German language: Juicy Film (Germany) and Coop 99 Filmproduktion (Austria). When Cineuropa met him, Antonin Svoboda, producer for Coop 99 (funded by the director Barbara Albert), explained that his role was really to help artists and give a chance to their projects. As a consequence, his work as a producer was often ackowledged and praised in great film festivals such as Venice (Darwin’s Nightmare, by Hubert Sauper, was discovered during the Venice Days and won the Europa Cinémas Label) and of course Cannes, where Lovely Rita [+see also:
trailer
film profile] (2001) and Hotel [+see also:
trailer
film profile] (2004) by Jessica Hausner, were presented, as well as The Edukators by Hans Weingartner (Official Selection 2004).
It is also worth mentioning that Sleeper is one of the 19 productions supported by ARTE presented in Cannes this year.

(Translated from French)