EU Film days 5/24 Gun-Shy

The final film in the EU film days festival was a German Film called Gun-Shy (Schussangst) A freakish tale of a lonely civil woker, Lukas, delivering meals to elderly and handicapped when a girl throws herself in his lap (metaphorically) for very unapparent reasons. We find out later that her step father is having sex with her after her Kendo classes, but it's very unclear whether she has a problem with it or not. Lukas quietly goes bonkers and buys a sniper rifle in order to kill the stepfather. One day the stepfather dies at one of his motivational speaches, eliminating the need to kill the step father. I'll leave the rest for you to see on your own.

I was somewhat disappointed with this movie. The fact that the girl throws a letter in his lap on the bus saying 'help me', and Lukas being a social worker would probably instinctivly want to help her, seems like a trap to me. Lukas is then kind of painted as a lunatic (actually I don't feel like there is a lot of depth to most of the characters in this film). The fact that he buys a huge SNIPER rifle and the last half of the film centers around it really seemed to knock this movie off any kind of interesting course, and made me uncomfortable throughout the film, but that isn't necessarily a bad thing if it has a cinematic impact I suppose.

There is a bunch of zany side characters in the film that are pretty funny, my favorite being the neighbor upstairs who blares North Korean Festival music. When Lukas goes upstairs to complain, the man apologizes and invites him in, giving him North Korean snake shochu (liquor), giving him a Kim Jong Il statue, and demonstrating a North Korean worker dance (all of this is certainly something an American director would have the neither desire to do, nor could get away with).