A gambling addict, his auction-obsessed wife, and a murder plot disguised as marital bliss.
The married couple Carl and Vera Sylvester live far beyond their means. She is a regular customer at the Dorotheum art auctions, he puts up with Lilli, his lover, and has become addicted to gambling . Carl wants to use the business ruin to make a new start with his wife . He noticesnot that Vera has long since planned an infamous campaign of extermination against him .
Acting
Gudrun Landgrebe's glacial venom masks Vera's scheming perfectly.
Production
Dorotheum auction house as backdrop for performative wealth.
Director
Xaver Schwarzenberger
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
Part of 1990s Austrian 'Fernweh' cinema exploring bourgeois decay through dark comedy, rarely exported beyond German-speaking markets.
Director Xaver Schwarzenberger was primarily cinematographer for Rainer Werner Fassbinder; this explains the precise framing of domestic spaces as traps.
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