Category: Movies
Bleak and emotionally wrought film with excellent performances by Kate Winslet as Hanna Schmitz and both David Kross and Ralph Fiennes as Michael Berg at different ages.
I found it impossible to relate to the two main characters or really understand the motivations for their actions or inactions even though I think the film is trying to make them in some way understandable. However I think that this failure of the film is somewhat deliberate as human psychology is sometimes inexplicable and the characters themselves are not entirely sure why they have done the things they have.
Covering similar ground to the British film Eden Lake While She Was Out sees Kim Basinger as a middle class woman that gets into a confrontation with a group of working class kids only for things to spiral out of control and end in violence.
But whereas Eden Lake felt real and thus more horrifying as a result While She Was Out is so ludicrously unbelievable in parts that it breaks the spell. From the choice of making the gang a perfectly ethnically diverse mix of pretty young men to the bizarre seduction scene the film lacks any sense of verisimilitude.