Das Leben des Vernon Subutex 1
This looks interesting. English sub-titled performances. Directed by Thomas Ostermeier – the resident genius!
Vernon Subutex is doing remarkably badly. Formerly the owner of a record store known all over Paris, blessed with customers from the rock scene to the hip bourgeoisie and swarmed by female groupies, he is only losing his business in the age of digital file sharing and streaming services. Then, after having sold most of it online, he is left with no source of income at all. Even more: without a right to exist. Dinosaur of the analogue era, he buries himself for years with six-packs and TV series in his apartment, which he can only pay for with the help of his former bandmate, the now legendary singer Alex Bleach. When the one dies early rock star death, the last economic hold breaks for Vernon. He ends up on the street and begins a couch surfing odyssey with old friends and companions and with it a journey to the depths of a deeply insecure society characterized by division, inequality and social neglect – until he finally has to fight his way through Paris as a clochard. Whether a hapless scriptwriter, former punk, now the “right sack”, a liberal Muslim with a fundamentalist daughter, a feminist ex-porn star, a super-snoop specializing in cyberbullying or a banlieue macho – the French author and filmmaker Virginie Despentes creates a dazzling panorama of different things in sharp changes of perspective Generations, social classes, gender identities and political orientations. The first part of her trilogy about Vernon Subutex is at the same time a parforce ride through the topics of our time and a fascinating social panorama. After “Return to Reims” and “In the Heart of Violence”, Thomas Ostermeier once again devotes himself to the contrasts of an increasingly polarizing and brutalizing present in the form of an adaptation of a contemporary French prose text.’
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