Keller - Teenage Wasteland

This is a disturbing and powerful first film from a woman director who did no other films before that and went to no film school. You can't tell from the film. It looks like the work of an experienced professional who knows exactly how to direct the cast and use the language of film to get the desired effects. Two teenage boys meet and strike up a friendship in a short time. They are caught stealing in a supermarket by an employee, a young woman. They are thrown out by her. They follow her home... In no time the boys and we, the audience, enter another world as Jeffrey does in "Blue Velvet". A disturbing world of the human mind where the lines between victim and perpetrator, right and wrong, the normal and the abnormal start to dissolve. The film is deeply disturbing because it goes to extremes, but stays believable, even plausible till the end. The cast is excellent throughout. No doubt this film will be controversial which might cost it the main prize here at Locarno. But on day one we have already seen what might be the most important film in the competition this year.