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ULRICH SEIDEL’S RIMINI IS A WELL-DONE TEMPORAL GENERATIONAL TRAGEDY
MOVIE REVIEW:
Exacting and moody, Ulrich Seidel's Rimini is hard to take because of its vulgar reality in which we are captive and cannot help watching. As the audience, we are the proverbial fly on the wall, subject to hapless sex, despairing aging, and dead ends that make us wonder what the future is for these characters—all of them, but of course, notably the protagonist. Shot entirely in long and medium shots, Rimini is a darkly cynical drama about Richie Bravo, played brilliantly by Michael Thomas. A manufactured star from the early 80s, whose finer days as an Austrian pop singer have faded. While his father, formerly a Hitler youth, spends his final days in a nursing home where he is confined, for every door he approaches is just an artificial picture of trees, bricks, or lumber with no escape. Ironically, father and son are locked into their fates with no way out, like the imprisoned people who once were kept enthaustically in concentration camps by their captors.
Ritchie works in Rimini, Italy, at a low-star beach resort during the dreary off-season performing for his aging fans who could ill-afford their vacations in the summer season. Ritchie's audiences are spartan but devoted. He implores the hotel entertainment manager to give him more money than his shows' box office take earns and doesn't…
