Tiere

This is easily one of the best German movies you will see this season. It's so tightly plotted that I'm wondering how to praise it without giving away too much. What is the housesitter up to? Who is the mysterious upstairs neighbor? Is Nick cheating on Anna? Or is Anna losing her mind? Greg Zglinski leaves you guessing for a long time. Half-way through the movie, several characters, including a talking cat, start dropping hints that were too blunt for my taste, but that's a minor kink in a very sleek script (based on an unfinished draft by Joerg Kalt). Philip Hochmair and Birgit Minichmayr are fabulous as Nick and Anna. They are both seasoned character actors with years of stage experience, and it shows. The camerawork is superb. The movie's trademark visual is the frame - a window, a doorway, a peephole, an actual picture frame. I took this as the director's way of saying that everything we see is someone's version of what's going on, rather than an objective account. If you liked Existenz, Mulholland Drive, Identity, Shutter Island, or Upstream Color, my guess is you will enjoy Animals as well.