Performer

There’s a scene in Performer in which a young man wears a t-shirt with the words “Natural Selector” and clutches a rifle. The film is not set in the U.S. but in Germany and yet the image has its own power. A young white man clutching a weapon, spewing misogyny as a camera gawks, brings to mind Elliot Rodger and the Isla Vista killings of 2014.

As the film progresses, that recollection doesn’t seem accidental. The incel movement of involuntarily celibate young men, which has seen its news share lessen post-Covid, is a huge part of Performer, so this is a film that may have been more effective had it been released a few years ago. Not that you can blame writer-director Oliver Grüttner for the world’s attention span.

Grüttner’s protagonist and “natural selector” is Tim (Tilman Vellguth), a student on the cusp of graduating from high school. He is clearly enticed by the idea of violence, even if his is a placid life. He hangs out with his friends, talking about sex as though armed with decades of experience. But, as a club scene shows, Tim and at least one friend aren’t quite jocks. As they inch timidly towards two girls on a chair, the girls move away. Cinematographers Giulia Schelhas and Moritz Friese’s non-showy style emphasises the boys’ humiliation. You imagine that they think of this as the end of world. So it seems redemption comes in form of a girl asking for a dance.

Suddenly, the story becomes brighter and the darkened interior shots get a break, as we see Tim and his companion on a ride. It doesn’t last, though, because the young man’s need for some physical intimacy hasn’t quite disappeared. So when, later, he initiates a kiss and she skillfully dodges his lips, the humiliation returns—although, you imagine, it never really leaves for kids like this. Which was how Rodger explained his plans for violence.

Performer attempts to link Tim’s behaviour to his family obliquely, but it is a rather awkward fit. In the film’s most memorable exchange, Tim’s parents welcome another couple and there is a discussion about an episode involving his mother, another man and near-violent anger. While father insists on mother’s culpability, demanding that she admits kissing her assailant, mother claims innocence while glossing over that detail. The issue is certainly part of the same man-and-woman politics and yet it feels superimposed, as though Grüttner needed a subplot and just grabbed at a random op-ed.

That, of course, could have been ignored if a clear sense of  just what the first-time director wanted to say came through. That isn’t the case. The film’s title seems to implicate young men with Tim’s views as performers of a sort, but there might be a performer offscreen as well. Grüttner has political ideas. But he may need a second feature or third feature to dredge up the confidence to back up those ideas in public. In the meantime, his work should find a home across platforms in Europe with a bias for newcomers and projects favouring topicality over excitement.