LEA
A film review by Steve Rhodes
Copyright 1998 Steve Rhodes
RATING (0 TO ****): **
LEA, a GOLDEN GLOBE nominee for best foreign film, tells the lugubrious story of a woman so traumatized by an abusive childhood that she remains almost mute for the rest of her life. Existing more in a metaphorical world than a real one, the bulk of the storyline serves as a conceit to prepare the viewer for the film's incredible conclusion.
As the story opens, Petr Hapka's overly dramatic music soon has trumpets blaring, drums banging and flutes wailing. A young Slovenian girl named Lea and her mother suffer abuse from Lea's cruel father. After a short series of dramatic incidents, the story jumps fourteen years later to 1991.
As the sullen Lea, Lenka Vlasakova gives a meticulous and delicate performance. With a better story than that by first-time writer and director Ivan Fila, Vlasakova's work might have been moving as well. But the story rings so false at every turn that there is rarely sufficient motivation for the audience to delve into the inaccessible picture's oblique characters.
Lea, now living with her adoptive parents, keeps an underground shrine filled with hundreds of glowing candles as a homage to her dead mother. A mysterious German named Strehlow shows up in their remote Slovenian village and offers to purchase Lea so that she can come back to Germany with him and be his bride. Through some financial maneuverings, Strehlow turns the offer into a non-negotiable demand. Once he has her back in Germany, he abuses her in some of the same ways that her father used to.
As the quintessentially cold and inhumane villain Strehlow, who obviously has a heart of gold hidden somewhere in his chest, Christian Redl gives a dramatic reading of his inexplicable character. Where Strehlow's anger and bitterness comes from is but one of the convoluted show's many conundrums.
The tale, which is as bleak and morose as the frozen landscape surrounding the derelict farm Strehlow calls home, manages to neatly tie up most of the story's mysteries before its hard-to-believe ending. Although the filmmaker clearly wants to illustrate utter despair and the hope for redemption, the movie plays too much as an exercise in cinematic style to draw one into the story.
LEA runs 1:40. The film's sparse dialog is in German and Slovenian with English subtitles. The movie is not rated but would be an R for violence.
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