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VENICE 2007 Venice Days

Small town intrigue in Head Under Water

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In a small, idyllic town in Germany, young Rico (Frederick Lau) is bullied by Robert, the star of their high school swim team, who dies from a poisoned éclair meant for the former. Was it murder? An allergic reaction? Why is the school principal afraid of the police investigation? And what is art teacher Martin (August Diehl) hiding in his house?

Andreas Kleinert’s Head Under Water (Der Freischwimmer), screening in Venice Days, starts out looking like a typical US high school genre film before “the story grows darker and more Kafkaesque, slowly transforming into something European and crossing many genres,” says the director.

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As other murders start to take place it becomes clear that the peace and quiet of this small town is tied to one of the film’s main themes. Rico is virtually deaf without his hearing aid and when he takes it off we hear only the muffled sounds he hears, while Martin is working on a secret art project on silence that not even his girlfriend is allowed to see. They are both outsiders seeking silence from a society that does not accept them and thus become suspects in the crimes.

Under the sunny skies of this “anytown,” the story’s disturbing climax is revealed just moments before the film’s end, and after the only truly decent character has been sacrificed as well. This, says the director, is the film’s strongest message: “You cannot survive if you are good in this world. Every one of us has a dark side that we don’t reveal because of [social] convention, so in life you end up compromising certain parts of your soul to fit in.”

Head Under Water was produced for €1.5m (although the director was hoping for twice the amount) by Futura Films Weltvertrieb and Typhoon Films, with support from WDR and the Filmstiftung Nordrhein-Westfalen. It is being sold internationally by Kinowelt.

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