Drain Blow-Up of its psychedelic hues and manic outbursts and you’re imagining Fred Kelemen’s darker-than-noir existential mystery. A moody archivist walks past a woman standing on the edge of a bridge. Seconds later he hears a splash and a cry for help. The remainder of the film chronicles his increasingly desperate reconstruction of her life and death, until the final act twists hard. If Antonioni laid bare a mod London overripe with narcissistic celebrity, Kelemen’s post-Communist Latvia is anonymous and exhausted. Like Oskar Roehler and Christian Petzold an exceptional exponent of a gritty new German filmmaking, Kelemen sketches the everyday origins of paranoia in full command of his craft. He renders an uncanny tone with shadowy visuals and the long takes of his Hungarian mentor, Béla Tarr, and especially with a slightly delirious sound design. Fallen’s deliberate pace may not appeal to all, but the patient will be rewarded with a gem.
