MWFF 2013: Gaming Instinct

Gaming Instinct
Spieltrieb


PRODUCTION TEAM

Director : Gregor Schnitzler

Screenwriter : Kathrin Richter, Jürgen Schlagenhof

Cinematographer : Andreas Berger

Editor : Georg Söring

Cast : Michelle Barthel, Jannik Schümann, Maximilian Brückner, , Richy Müller, Ulrike Folkerts, Sophie von Kessel, Helmut Berger, Isolde Barth,

Music : Gerd Baumann

Film production and Sales : Markus Zimmer, Clasart Film & Fernsehproduktion GmbH, Kaufingerstr. 24, 80331 Munich (Allemange) tél: (+49-89)4506 10 24, zimmer@tmg.de Ventes/Sales: Carlos Hertel, TM International, Munich (Allemangne), hertel@tmg.de

OFFICIAL FILM SYNOPSIS

"Fourteen-year-old Ada, expelled from her previous school for fighting, arrives at Bonn’s Ernst Bloch High School. An intelligent girl who prefers her own company, she has problems with her bourgeois schoolmates. The only people she respects are the elderly history teacher Höfi, who is able to challenge her fierce intellect, and the young Polish sports teacher, Mr. Smutek, who encourages her passion for running. When a new student, 18-year-old Alev, arrives at the school, Ada is attracted by his cool. Multi-ethnic Alev lives with his mother Amila and is friends with Grüttel, Tom and Bastian, who are his own age and live in a residential unit that is part of the school. Ada feels herself also drawn to Alev in a physical way, but Alev, not without self-awareness, tells her he is impotent. Nonetheless, the two gradually grow closer and Ada falls in love. Eventually, Alev explains to her his theory of the “gaming instinct", which views people as characters in a game and their behaviour as gaming moves. When Mr. Höfling, one of the few people both Ada and Alev respect, commits suicide, Alev decides to put one of his elaborate game plans into practice. And Ada is its starring character." 

This film, shown at the Montreal World Film Festival 2013, is at times hard to watch as it portrays a type of violence which is not exactly physical. It is a psychological and a moral type of violence that fully involves physical senses of both characters, even when only voyeuristic, as in the case of the male character. 

Two teenagers are involved in deceit, manipulation, blackmail and extortion. They totally luck respect for a person who had treated them well, their teacher. They strip him of his dignity and moral integrity. In the process, they commit these same crimes also towards themselves, towards their inner human core.

At the end, the main preoccupation of the heroin is revealed - she is the one who won the game. Incredibly, she really cherishes the acknowledgement of this fact by her partner in crime, whereas should she had grown through her ordeal, she basically would not have cared at all what he thought. As this scene of her having won plays itself out towards the end of the film, it becomes more than obvious that unfortunately she has not gained any understanding as to what it was they have done, into what really sick place both of them had fallen. No regrets or guild are being expressed; no moral dilemma seems to exist for either of them. Moreover, the film ends by showing us a very satisfied-looking heroin, with a happy smirk on her face, first riding  a motor bike into the sun-lit seaside scenery, then walking through the ruins of the Temple of Apollo at Delphi where the famous phrase “Know Thyself” is carved in the stone. It become painfully apparent that she has not won, as what she was told by her crime partner, but has actually lost, since she has failed herself and others as a human being and has not come to fully (and it appears even partially) to comprehend this fact.