Ground Beneath My Feet (The)
- Director: Marie Kreutzer
- Writer: Marie Kreutzer
- Producer: Alexander Glehr; Franz Novotny
CGiii Comment
Clutter and clarity...obligatory ingredients for a successful psychodrama!
Marie Kreutzer does not disappoint, she doles each one out by the bucket-load. Mental mayhem and corporate control are incongruous [and surprising] partners...yet, they walk hand-in-hand, self-harming and back-stabbing, leaving in their wake a visceral trail of casualities.
Control and chaos...madness and mayhem...big business and doomed lives. Marie Kreutzer does not make it easy...the ground may - indeed - be beneath her assured directorial feet...but, the audience hasn't a clue where to stand, there's nothing concrete here, nothing to cling onto. Indeed, a complex cocktail of collision...two worlds, two lives...how detached can you [and they] really be?
Lines are blurred...but, never crossed. This is playful filmmaking, the questions keep coming, the answers duck and dive...and, the tension becomes more and more palpable. It's exhausting, it's exciting...it's involving.
This is a slow-burning, stylish piece of work...with a story that keeps you guessing right up to the end...and, beyond!
Trailer...
The(ir) Blurb...
Lola is almost thirty. A successful management consultant, she is constantly on the move between the companies she is tasked with restructuring. Her chic apartment in Vienna is more of a mailbox and a launderette than a home. A hundred working hours a week is not uncommon in addition to five sessions at the gym, expensive dinners with clients and nights spent in sterile hotels. Her career, which she is advancing with cleverness, efficiency and ruthless cunning, appears to be unstoppable. She applies a similarly disciplined approach when it comes to managing her private life. This means that nobody is allowed to know about the existence of her older sister Conny, who has been suffering from mental illness for a long time and who never leaves her apartment. But when Conny attempts to commit suicide, Lola searches for a way to be there for her.
Marie Kreutzer’s portrait of the jet-setting Lola reveals that there is sometimes just a thin line separating polar opposites such as order and chaos, rise and fall – even for someone who thrives in a society fixated on achievement.
Cast & Characters
Valerie Pachner as Lola
Pia Hierzegger as Conny
Mavie Hörbiger as Elise
Michelle Barthel as Birgit
Marc Benjamin as Sebastian
Dominic Marcus Singer as Jürgen
Meo Wulf as Clemens
Axel Sichrovsky as Herr Bacher
Bernd Birkhahn as Herr Degenhardt
Axel Wandtke as Herr Giese
Martina Eitner-Acheampong as Drau Lubitz
Susann Uplegger as Frau Tanninger
Lilly Marie Tschörtner as Frau Rennecke
Florian Reiners as Bankvertreter
Regina Fritsch as Dr. Lederer (Connys Ärztin)