Two secret lovers spend a lazy afternoon together. When the woman insinuates her betrayed husband secretly watches them and her young lover might be framed as a terrorist, the dreamlike atmosphere turns into a waking nightmare.
DCP, 14 minutes, Bart Groenendaal / Dutch Mountain Film, the Netherlands 2022
The Young Man as a Movie Star (Paranoia, Opulence, Perversion, Competition) is a film installation with four narrative films screened simultaneously, showing variations on a troubled relationship between a man (20) and a woman (50).
The films are inspired by the oeuvres of four 20th century male film directors, for whom female-male relations form an important pillar in their work: Jean-Luc Godard, Alfred Hitchcock, Steven Spielberg and Lars Von Trier. Starting and ending at different times, the films loop to repeat the cycle of interconnections formed with each round, allowing the viewer to drift at will between the screens, and to come up with their own interpretation.
Paranoia is about a secret love affair between an older woman and a younger man, spending an afternoon together. As the woman insinuates her husband might be spying on them, the young man becomes increasingly paranoid.
In Opulence, a short film-noir in black and white, the young man is a runaway terrorist who wears a bomb-vest and ends up on the porch of a manic housewife who has just murdered her husband, offering her a cynical possibility for escape.
In Perversion, shot in dramatic widescreen, a mothers frustration with the manner in which her son is coping with the death of his father leads her to offer him ecstasy until they both lose all control.
In Competition two colleague performers rehearse a dance piece on the beach. When the woman quits and claims she is being exploited by the (absent) choreographer, the young man, who happens to be the choreographers current lover, seeks relief in self-harm when asked to be in solidarity with her.
