Austrian writer-director Bernhard Wenger‘s feature directing debut Peacock dissects the themes of identity and self-presentation in the age of social media but it doesn’t hit you over the head with a hammer. Actually, it doesn’t even mention social media much at all.
Peacock, an Austrian-German co-production that world premiered at the Venice Critics’ Week last year and gets its U.K. debut at the Glasgow Film Festival on Oscar Sunday, with another screening on Monday, features German rising star Albrecht Schuch (Edward Berger‘s All Quiet on the Western Front, Andreas Kleinert’s Dear Thomas, Nora Fingscheidt’s System Crasher) as Matthias, along with the likes of Anton Noori, and Julia Franz Richter.
“Matthias is a master of performance, slipping seamlessly into any role demanded by his rent-a-companion company’s clients – from art-loving boyfriend to Good Samaritan and dutiful son,” notes a synopsis. “His people-pleasing attitude has become so extreme that his girlfriend Sophia (Richter) begins to wonder if there’s any of the ‘real’ him left, plunging Matthias into an existential crisis.”
Wenger’s short film Excuse Me, I’m Looking for the Ping-Pong Room and My Girlfriend won the best short film award at the Austrian Film Awards 2019, and was also honored with the Max Ophüls Award, as well as both short film awards at the Diagonale – Festival of Austrian Film.
Wenger came up with the idea for Peacock when he read about rent-a-friend agencies in Japan more than 10 years ago and thought that after completing his film education and several well-received shorts, the topic of self-presentation would be worth the feature treatment. His script for the movie was selected for the 40th Cinéfondation Residence of the Cannes Film Festival in 2020.
The 32-year-old talked to THR about his research in Japan, his creative process, comparisons that his work has drawn with the likes of Ruben Östlund and Yorgos Lanthimos, and what’s next for him.
You discovered rent-a-friend agencies in an article in The New Yorker in 2014. How did you research the topic?
In 2018, when the time was right, I went to Japan to do research about them. They have existed in Japan for more than a decade because of isolation and loneliness in society. People can rent somebody just to go for a coffee or take a walk together. They can rent somebody for whatever they don’t have in life. So people are rented as partners, as friends, as family members. This initially good idea to help people who might be introverts to try out social contact was quickly used for different things, such as better self-presentation, hiding lies, manipulation, showing power. And these are, unfortunately, the reasons why these agencies would also work in Western societies.
Do you speak Japanese?
I just had a translator with me and tried to get people to talk openly with me, which was not that easy. But luckily, one person really opened up. And all the stories I heard there about assignments often were too absurd to even show them in the movie, so I turned everything down a bit. Some of the assignments we see in the film happened exactly as shown. Other ones would have been too much. Or they could be shown but it would have been a different film, a classic comedy film. But the humor I work with is subtle and a bit bizarre, so I didn’t want to be too much over the top.
When I was in Japan to do research, I met a man working at an agency who told me that because of his odd job where he’s being someone else every day, he’s got the problem that he doesn’t know how to be himself anymore. And I found that incredibly tragic and built this satirical story around it. I’m telling the story through a man working at a rent-a-friend agency, but it is a satirical story about our society and our society’s problems.
The themes you explore do seem very timely and universal…
Self-presentation is a huge topic in our society. If we take a look at social media, where everybody presents themselves in the best light, it has really become a problem. … I wanted to talk about these topics in a film without showing social media, but see the film as a metaphor for it.
We don’t see much in terms of selfies and social media in the film…
Yeah. We see people taking selfies, and there is a TV report about an influencer who pretended to be on vacation, but in reality, she was in her own backyard. … But apart from that, I wanted to show more about how people present themselves better in public.
Your work has been compared to the likes of Yorgos Lanthimos and Ruben Östlund, among others. Any cinematic or creative influences?
I was influenced by Scandinavian cinema in my youth. (Aki) Kaurismäki was the first director I really admired, and British black comedy also influenced me. And together with my very Austrian sense for tragedy, this (cinematic) handwriting came together over the years.
How would you describe your approach when it comes to what can be a very thin line between tragic bleakness and humor?
I try to make films with important and tragic topics but still have optimism and warmth towards my characters.
How cool was it to work with Albrecht Schuch, who is widely regarded as one of the finest young German actors, and the rest of your great cast?
It was wonderful to work with such an amazing cast on my first feature film. Many of these actors and actresses I have really admired and have always wanted to work with. And thankfully, they accepted my invitation to play these roles.
With Albrecht, it was that I always loved seeing him in his previous projects, and I always really wanted to follow his characters and be very close to them. That’s a quality we especially needed for Matthias because he is such a passive main character that you still have to want to follow over the length of a feature film. And on the other side, Albrecht is incredibly versatile. I’ve often seen him in different forms of hero roles and I thought it’s very interesting that Matthias takes on these hero roles in his jobs, but in his private life, he’s still lost. And that part of being lost and really searching for something I’ve never seen Albrecht portray before. I always think it’s interesting to see an actor doing something new.
What did you learn from your interactions with the actors?
Albrecht, for example, said that it is so hard to play a role when a character enters a room and nothing changes because of him. He has also said that in acting school, he learned how to be someone else, how to take on a role, but you don’t really learn how to get rid of it. So Albrecht told us that he found his own ways of getting rid of these roles again. But our main character here obviously doesn’t know how to do that. And neither did the person who inspired the story in Japan. He told me that he emotionally closes down before taking assignments because he doesn’t want to get attached when he plays a partner, a son or a father. And when he comes home and sits with his family, he needs time to open up again. So it’s not that there is no emotion at all, it’s just hidden under a few layers, and it needs to be brought out again. Because when you play someone else every day, you don’t have the time to find real emotions.
How interesting will it be for you to screen Peacock in Glasgow?
It’s our U.K. premiere, and I’m very much looking forward to it. I have been sitting in the cinema in different countries I’ve traveled to with the film, and it’s very exciting. I’ve always sat in on the first screening. It’s very interesting to see how different cultures react to the film. In the U.S., the reaction was pretty shocked given scenes of nakedness, for example. And in Sweden, where we showed the film, people loved the darker scenes way more than in other countries. So you really get this sense and feeling of different cinema cultures.
Do you know what you want to do next?
Actually, I’ve got two feature film ideas and one series idea. Peacock has been in my head for six years now, so I’m happy to get it out there. The series, for example, is a period piece around the Austrian monarchy with humor. It’s been really good to do research because time-wise, it’s so different from Peacock that it opened up a lot of head space again.
The feature film ideas again have the same handwriting with humor and satire, but are contemporary again. One is around the topic of breakups because the big subjects of cinema are love and death. And I think breakups are a very interesting cinematic combination of both of these topics.
You have been mentioning your approach to humor several times…
I’d love to tell you a bit more about the humor I work with. In commercial comedies nowadays, humor mostly happens through dialog or slapstick or exaggerations. But the humor I love to work with is subtle, odd, and visual. If you look back at the films of (French mime, actor and filmmaker) Jacques Tati, for example, the visual humor is so wonderful to watch. In my projects, visual humor is shown through cinematography, editing, art design, costumes – all these departments work together so that humor comes across naturally by observation. These strange situations we often know from our everyday lives that contain humor are my big source of inspiration.
Any examples?
I was sitting in the tram, and a few rows in front of me, a mother was sitting with two children. The one child was screaming and running up and down, and the other child was really calm and quiet. The mother was just looking at the loud child, while the quiet one was licking the window of the tram in peace, with nobody realizing it. I really love these small things in our everyday life.
Before I let you go, I want to ask a bit more about working in close partnership with the various creatives on a film that you mentioned. How much do you prepare and how much do you improvise?
I am a filmmaker that focuses on preparation instead of improvisation. The film is very close to the script, especially dialogue-wise. When you write for years, you really know why every word is in the script. But of course, it’s also about rehearsing with the actors and precisely preparing before shooting. Actually, the DOP, Albin Wildner, and I have done short films together before, and we’ve found a way of preparation that gives us freedom on set later.
We shoot the whole film once with a small camera test-wise, with myself and some colleagues being in front of the camera and “acting” out all the scenes. This is great because then we know about all the resolution and other details. It’s a bit like storyboarding, but shooting it instead. So on set, we can then say, “Okay, Scene 5-7,” and Albin works with the lights and camera crew, and I work with the actors and have more time to rehearse with them. And by having done it once already, by having acted it myself before, I have learned so much about rhythm, timing, dialogue, and also these very small things. For example, does it make sense for an actor to walk from here to there in front of the table or would it feel more natural to walk on the other side of the table?
Do you show what you shoot to the cast?
Under no circumstances. But to the art design, costumes, and DOP team. They all get to see it so that everybody knows what will happen. It’s a way to be very precise in preparation that gives me more time to direct on set and rehearse with the actors.
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