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Teenage Angst (2008) 
 
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1159705/

German language with English subtitles

This accomplished hour-long first feature is set at a posh German boarding school. The photography shows a good eye, with a sense of what to show off and what not to reveal completely.  The scenes, often broken off abruptly, have an explosive, improvised feel that keeps you watching.

Four bad boys led by the bold, dominant Dyrbusch (Niklas Kohrt) form a kind of pact surrounding a nearby "dacha" hangout where they expound Nietschean fantasies and drink shots and snort crystal meth. Dyrbusch's second self is Bogatsch (Michael Ginsburg), who seems manifestly inferior, but brims over with sympathetic hostility and aggression. Konstantin (Franz Dinda) is just naive and curious. Von Leibnitz (Janusz Kocaj) is strange, needy, an outsider, but also brilliant, an aristocrat, perhaps of homoerotic appeal to the leaders with his soft looks and long hair. 

The teens at an exclusive German boarding school who form a little club that quickly devolves into little more than a youth gang for rich boys. When its two most psychopathic members attack a waitress, they are stopped by one of their own. The film then takes a sharp turn as the two troublemakers decide to focus their sadistic practices on one of their own. 

The fourth teen, meanwhile, tries to stop the abuse but is torn between his sense of right & wrong and his desire to belong. The abused boy is unfortunately emotionally unbalanced and is unable to see the violent bullying for what it is. 

A big, paunchy, but nicely dressed teacher-mentor (Michael Schweighöfer) is the only authority figure seen. He tries by a show of ease and self confidence to mask the fact that among these moneyed delinquents he may not have the last word. Events do turn tragic and in an unexpected and ironic manner.

The story has familiar elements; the outline has strong echoes of 'Young Torless.' But the telling has a raw contemporary feel. There's a fresh sense of danger and near-hysteria about many scenes -- something tricky to create, and trickier to keep from overwhelming the narrative. Director Thomas Stuber, who was only 26 when he made this film but had six years of apprenticeship behind him, gets intense performances out of his actors. In some of the group sequences, especially the near-rape, you may forget anyone is acting, yet to balance that, the setup is classically cinematic. The economical editing maintains the nice balance between chaos and order. Stuber shows a lot of promise. The writing of Holger Jäckle is praiseworthy too.

The film is sometimes classified as a gay-themed film. However, none of the characters is overtly gay, nor is there any indication that anyone might be. There are no scenes of gay sex nor any dialogue to suggest any. The abused teen may appear effeminate to some viewers, but there is nothing in the film that suggests he is gay. This film is probably better described as "gay interest" as the film includes several bare-chested scenes of attractive young males. 

"Teenage Angst" seems to have generated considerable negativism among reviewers. The intent was to portray (as brutally as possible) the horrors of bullying; in that the film succeeded. The actors are well cast and convincing in their various roles. The 65 minute film length means the film moves along at a comfortable clip without getting overly bogged down. 

Criticism that the bare-chested cover art is misleading is not accurate. On the contrary, each one of the four main characters appears bare-chested at some time in the film. So while the exact scene in the cover photo may not appear in the film, the photo is nevertheless accurate in portraying the type of content that the viewer can expect to see in the movie. 

'Teenage Angst' is a release by Picture This!, the indie distributor of mostly foreign coming of age and gay-related films (e.g. 'Garcon Stupide,' 'Come Undone,''Aimee and Jaguar,''Before the Fall') that as of Nov. 2009 has closed its doors after 13 years. 'Angst" and Angelina Maccarone's (2006, also German) 'Punish Me' ('Verfogt') are examples that Picture This! is a niche loss that will be felt both by viewers and by the industry. This comes on top of the greater loss of pre-eminent foreign film distributor New Yorker Films, which shut down earlier this year after 44 years and was responsible for the US release of many foreign classics. 

This is a well-made DVD. For an indie film, the picture quality is very good, and the soundtrack is sharp and easy to hear. I also enjoyed many of the songs used in the music soundtrack. 


INCLUDES

Baby Shark (2005) 

Bebe requin (original title) 

15 min - Short
  
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0459672/

French language English subtitles

Perhaps the best Pascal-Alex Vincent's short film to date, "Bebe Requin" neatly weaves three stories of teenage relationships and the lack of communication in postmodern society. And by postmodern we could understand 'fragmented', that yearns for the whole. Here such fragmentation is related directly to the advent of technology. In the first story, a boy and a girl sit together semi-naked whilst the boy entertains himself with online gaming (technology). The cries of death come from the game as a mumbled cacophony that fills the room. There is not a word spoken between them, and when the door ring bells, they're forced to get dressed. A boy has come to visit them. And while he stares taciturnly into the screen, he seems to make a decision and "breaks the ice", so to speak.

The recently arrived boy removes his shirt, unzips his pants and walks towards the other boy, demanding to have his penis sucked. Of course, there is no reasonable reaction from either the girl or the boy. They continue to sit down, he continues to play and only ventures that the distraction is going to make him lose, even so he briefly practices fellatio on his friend, although the girl refuses to do the same. They are deeply concentrated on the screen, which is only mirroring the indifference of our time. But what does our era enjoin us to do? We must either survive through the simulacrum or succumb to the real, this foreclosure bequeaths us or sustains turning away from communication. When the girl refuses to provide pleasure to the boy, he hits them both with his skateboard. Once he's gone, we still see the boy and the girl, faces covered in blood, sitting on the couch, and he's still playing with the same feeling of boredom in his eyes.

The second story is a hyperbole of the lack of communication, as a teenager tries, day after day, to talk to another boy. He talks and talks and talks, and he never receives an answer; his interlocutor barely looks at him and keeps on walking. As philosopher Alan Badiou would explain, communication transmits a universe made up of disconnected images, remarks, statements and commentaries whose accepted principle is incoherence. And it's only through the incoherent ramblings of the lonely teenager that we understand the relevance of true rapport.

In the third story, the male body is the center of the narrative. Quoting Badiou: "We will call 'body' the worldly dimension of the subject and 'trace' that which, on the basis of the event, determines the active orientation of the body. A subject is therefore a formal synthesis between the statics of the body and its dynamics, between its composition and its effectuation". It's only fitting, then, to observe the body duplicated, in this case, in twin brothers that carry out different dynamics. After all, one of them is gladly involved in a sexual relationship with a girl, and subsequently the other one is furiously jealous. When one of the brothers hits the other in order to supplant him during the intercourse, it's made clear that the "active orientation of the body" can easily surmount the established boundaries.

Why is this short film a work of art? As Badiou would define it "Art is not the sublime descent of the infinite into the finite abjection of the body and sexuality. It is the production of an infinite subjective series through the finite means of a material subtraction". Pascal-Alex Vincent successfully blends subjectivity with sexuality and provides us with an honest insight into the heart of adolescence.