{"id":35401,"date":"2025-08-31T22:57:23","date_gmt":"2025-08-31T22:57:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/35401\/"},"modified":"2025-08-31T22:57:23","modified_gmt":"2025-08-31T22:57:23","slug":"willem-dafoe-in-poetic-character-study","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/35401\/","title":{"rendered":"Willem Dafoe in Poetic Character Study"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tThere is an elegiac tone and a dash of wit in this lovely, small-scale film held together by Willem Dafoe<\/a>\u2018s magnetic presence and natural but compelling performance. He plays Lucius, the American manager of a grand hotel in Vienna, a job he has taken pride in for two decades and will lose soon when a new owner takes over. \u201cThis is the house where I live. And now I find myself forced to abandon it,\u201d he says in voiceover. His sadness is lightened a bit by the oddity of the details he values in that same voiceover. \u201cHotel Intercontinental Vienna. The first luxury brand hotel in the world and the first one to have telephones in every bathroom.\u201d <\/p>\n

\n\tAs we follow him through several days, he shows himself to be annoyed at the change, unwilling to admit that the hotel\u2019s glory days are over, and finally reconciled to something new, whatever that turns out to be. The Souffleur would be a very different work without Dafoe. He makes the character and the entire film down-to-earth and accessible, two things Gast\u00f3n Solnicki is not known for.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tThe Souffleur\t\t<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t\t\tThe Bottom Line<\/p>\n

\tSmall but beautifully crafted.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\tVenue: <\/strong>Venice Film Festival (Horizons)
Cast: <\/strong>Willem Dafoe, Lilly Lindner, Stephanie Argerich, Gast\u00f3n Solnicki
Director: <\/strong>Gast\u00f3n Solnicki
Writers:<\/strong> Julia Niemann, Gast\u00f3n Solnicki
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t1 hour 18 minutes\n\t\t<\/p>\n

\n\tThe Argentinian-born director is known and admired for his artistically daring but often cryptic films, as varied as Papirosen (2011), built from his own family\u2019s trove of home movies, and Kekszakallu (2016), a quasi-documentary about adolescent girls coming of age, which won that year\u2019s FIPRESCI prize for best film in the Horizons section of the Venice<\/a> Film Festival. \u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tEven with Dafoe, Solnicki\u2019s approach hasn\u2019t changed all that much. This latest Venice premiere is definitely a work of fragments, isolated scenes that amount to a fly-on-the-wall view of Lucius but are not meant to create a traditional narrative, or for the pieces to fit together as neatly as a jigsaw puzzle.<\/p>\n

\n\tWeaving in and out of Lucius\u2019 story are black-and-white images of the hotel in the past, from construction to children ice skating outside, to the glamour of a crowded dining room. Much of that footage is archival (the Intercontinental is a real hotel in Vienna, and not dead), some of it enhanced by Solnicki. Those scenes serve to blend the past and present in a way that suits the film\u2019s impressionistic style.<\/p>\n

\n\tEvery now and then some of the hotel\u2019s staff members face the camera and announce their name and room number, for no apparent reason except to let us know they are there and probably about to be displaced. One of those workers is Lilly (Lilly Lindner), Lucius\u2019 daughter, who grew up in the hotel but is far less attached to it than her father and ready to move on. In one scene between her and Lucius, he expresses his concern, looking at her arm and asking if she has been harming herself again. But where a traditional film would lean into the family dynamics, The Souffleur lets those moments sit with us and moves on. At one point we see giraffes. Who knows why?<\/p>\n

\n\tAlthough Lucius spends a lot of time walking the halls and checking the hotel\u2019s dining room, he also meets the new owner, Facundo Ordo\u00f1ez, a rich Argentinian played by Solnicki. Improbably, they have a cordial relationship. And when Ordo\u00f1ez plays tennis, Solnicki gives him a wiry nervous energy that adds a touch of humor.<\/p>\n

\n\tThere is nothing funny about the film\u2019s jokey title, which is just a strained metaphor. A souffl\u00e9 rises slowly in the oven at the start, and Lucius and another staff member debate why the chef\u2019s souffl\u00e9s have been bad lately. The falling souffl\u00e9 as a symbol of the crumbling hotel is the kind of heavy-handed touch Solnicki rarely indulges.<\/p>\n

\n\tMore often the images are evocative and visually stunning, shot by Rui Po\u00e7as, the cinematographer who often works with Miguel Gomes, including on the recent, visually arresting Grand Tour<\/a>. Outdoor scenes especially are artfully composed, such as a distant view of a bridge with the river flowing under it in the foreground, or the glistening look of a puddle on the street at night. Solnicki often likes to keep the camera still, as people walk in and out of the frame.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe Souffleur is a brief hour and 18 minutes long, and just as much a tone poem as it is a character study. Dafoe brings ballast and humanity to it, uniting its fragments as Lucius decides what to do with his future. It\u2019s worth remembering that Dafoe started his career in theater as a member of the avant-garde Wooster Group and understands stories that defy conventional narratives. He is just the person to make this beautifully made little film come to life.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"There is an elegiac tone and a dash of wit in this lovely, small-scale film held together by…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":35402,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[263],"tags":[18,117,27508,19,17,327,12876,21427,11492,21428,27509],"class_list":{"0":"post-35401","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-movies","8":"tag-eire","9":"tag-entertainment","10":"tag-gaston-solnicki","11":"tag-ie","12":"tag-ireland","13":"tag-movies","14":"tag-venice","15":"tag-venice-2025","16":"tag-venice-film-festival","17":"tag-venice-film-festival-2025","18":"tag-willem-dafoe"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35401","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=35401"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35401\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35402"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35401"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=35401"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35401"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}