This is an interesting and often harrowing film about the travails of a female mental patient. Although she is from a comfortable, wealthy family, "Veronika" (Elisabeth Stepanek) suffers from religious delusions and terrifying hallucinations and finds herself constantly taken advantage of by various men. The genesis of the movie is supposedly a letter the real-life character wrote to the director, asking him "to tell her story". This is not some nice, tidy TV movie on the subject of mental illness though. It does not offer any easy resolutions (as the chilling English-language title suggests). The hallucinatory imagery is strong, and the heroine's various suicide attempts and institutionalizations are played for maximum effect. There are also several strong sex scenes like when she has a sexual encounter with a dim-witted Ghananian immigrant she just met after having a recent abortion and she starts bleeding all over the place, which neither partner really reacts to. Anyway, don't ever expect to ever see this one on the Lifetime Channel!
The one thing that did kind of annoy me is that I wasn't sure at times if the character was supposed to be a paranoid schizophrenic or a crazed nymphomaniac. This often reminded of the 70's Christine Lindberg exploitation film "Anite, Swedish Nymph" (which I suspect was later an inspiration for Lars Von Trier's "Nymphomaniac"). It's not surprising a pretty female schizophrenic would get taken advantage of sexually, but it's sometimes a bit much here. It's not hard to believe someone suffering from religious delusions might think a paraplegic she meets is Jesus Christ,for instance, but would she then turn around and give him a bj on an elevator five minutes later? (Who does THAT after meeting "Jesus"?) Her promiscuity is not treated in an exploitative manner by any means, and the actress Stepanek gives a very brave performance, spending much of the movie spiritually, emotionally, or physically naked, but they do perhaps play up the lurid sex angle too much for a serious movie.
Still, overall, this is an effective movie with strong imagery and powerful performances. I would recommend it.
The one thing that did kind of annoy me is that I wasn't sure at times if the character was supposed to be a paranoid schizophrenic or a crazed nymphomaniac. This often reminded of the 70's Christine Lindberg exploitation film "Anite, Swedish Nymph" (which I suspect was later an inspiration for Lars Von Trier's "Nymphomaniac"). It's not surprising a pretty female schizophrenic would get taken advantage of sexually, but it's sometimes a bit much here. It's not hard to believe someone suffering from religious delusions might think a paraplegic she meets is Jesus Christ,for instance, but would she then turn around and give him a bj on an elevator five minutes later? (Who does THAT after meeting "Jesus"?) Her promiscuity is not treated in an exploitative manner by any means, and the actress Stepanek gives a very brave performance, spending much of the movie spiritually, emotionally, or physically naked, but they do perhaps play up the lurid sex angle too much for a serious movie.
Still, overall, this is an effective movie with strong imagery and powerful performances. I would recommend it.