Weekdays

One person's everyday routine is another man's adventure. Carsten Gabhardt's unnamed protagonist spends her week clubbing, fucking, visiting the seaside and having lunch with grandma and a blind fisherman.

Over the course of six days, we see the unnamed woman (Zoe Naumann) going through actions that seem as alien to us as they are ordinary to her. On Tuesday, for example, after taking a shower and towelling herself dry, she puts on a top, makes coffee, cuts up some coke, retrieved from a bucket of paint, and receives a male visitor. All without underwear. On Wednesday, after giving a bloke a quick handjob in bed, she gets up and goes to a minimal tech-house club and snidely watches hipsters in black rimmed glasses rock back and forth on the dancefloor before going to the chillout room and having a little chat with a girlfriend. And so the week continues, each day a catalogue of bizarre life experiences.

The first two parts of Weekdays - Tuesday and Wednesday - are the best; they feel raw and give promise of more interesting things to come, which is sadly not the case. They were first released as shorts in 1999 and 2000, which is telling as they appear to have been filmed at a completely different time to the rest of the movie - Naumann's hair is longer and she is a lot thinner. It's not clear whether the days are meant to be consecutive, or snapshots of a short period of her life, which could explain these continuity issues, but too little is explained to construct any semblance of plot and grasp what's going on. The dialogue is sparse and when the characters do speak, it's clunkily written, laden with insipid profundities, and often badly delivered. Rather than being surreal, this is just confusing. The music is mostly minimal abstract bleeps and noises that suit the production, which exudes wannabe-nihilist chic and makes everything all the more pretentious.

If the whole film had been as good as the opening two episodes, this could have been interestingly surreal, while it ends up being perplexing and dull.