The trends of the zeitgeist combine in Peacock: its mockery of bland rich people with such comfortable lives that they are forced to make trouble for themselves is clearly inspired by the work of Ruben Östlund. The problem is that social satire works best with a firm opinion on the behavior being ridiculed. Is one of the social media influencers mocking with affection, or is it mocking out of rage or classist anger? That a film about authenticity feels like a rip-off is a huge disappointment. And yet, there's a kernel of truth in Peacock that didn't quite mature, but is still fascinating to parse.
It's a bit hard to understand what Matthias (Albrecht Schuch) does for a living, but we eventually realize that he and his best friend David (Anton Noori) run a friend-rental business. If his son is too busy with his job abroad to attend their garden party, Matthias will come in his place and win the trust of all his club friends. Is your father unavailable to impress the other kids at school? Matthias will don a pilot's uniform and show his pride in the exhibition. Are you an elderly lady (Maria Hofstätter) who wants to practice arguing with her unpleasant husband so she can finally divorce him after decades of unhappiness? Matthias will take the cake, give you his full attention, and help you devise tactics for the big announcement.
Director: Bernhard Wenger
Writer: Bernhard Wenger
Stars: Albrecht Schuch, Anton Noori, Julia Franz Richter
But Matthias has become so adept at erasing himself at will that he no longer knows his own desires. He and his girlfriend Sophia (Julia Franz Richter) live in a dreamy modernist house, which Matthias begins furnishing with replicas of objects he's found at work. Sophia takes revenge by acquiring a Great Dane, a gigantic animal presented in an early shot as so still that it's possible it's just another strange statue. But once it's established that the pet is real, Matthias still doesn't say anything about it.
For this and other reasons, it's clear that Matthias needs a break. David sends him to a New Age retreat where he meets Ena (Theresa Frostad Eggesbø), a tall, friendly Norwegian who doesn't speak German. (A quick aside: you know you're in Austria when no one at the retreat can resist doing naked yoga outdoors. It's hard to imagine anyone at the Glasgow Film Festival so comfortable with the mere idea.) Ena is vivacious and unafraid to speak her mind, and this activates some neurons in Matthias he thought he'd silenced long ago. But with Matthias's career, the terrifying question is whether Ena is who she says she is.
Unfortunately, the question of Ena's authenticity is far less interesting than Matthias's. It's rare for art to examine how men shape their identities through the gaze of others, though there are plenty of cautionary tales about young women so absorbed by social media that their true selves no longer exist. Why does it make us so uncomfortable to ask men, especially a non-toxic man like Matthias, to confront how he, too, has erased his own identity for profit? He may not be an influencer with a ridiculous morning routine, but he still makes a living pretending to be something he's not. The shot of Matthias's closet, where all his work clothes are stored in identical brown bags hanging next to shelves of identical cardboard boxes, is both extremely funny and completely terrifying. There's nothing there, intentionally!
Instead, writer-director Bernhard Wenger explores what happens when a relationship is built on inauthenticity. It's a fairly common assumption that the person you sleep with at night knows the truth about who you are and what you think, and vice versa. And if that's not true—whether through infidelity, simple estrangement, or something else—it's usually pretty devastating. Matthias has gotten so good at acting for his clients that he's forgotten to be a present and genuine boyfriend to Sophia. Ena, on the other hand, is so good at being herself in any circumstance that it's no surprise Matthias is fascinated by her. David's happy, chaotic family life contrasts sharply with the gleaming but empty modernity of Matthias's house, but Matthias doesn't quite understand what he needs to do differently to have the warm, genuine human relationships that David has. It would have been much more interesting if the film had focused on that mental void inside his head, rather than the more common stereotype between men and women.
Mr. Schuch, a major star of the German world who rose to global fame with All Quiet on the Western Front, does a powerful and unsettling job here as an accomplished actor who has forgotten how to stop. His reactive emptiness is convincing enough to maintain Peacock's momentum even as the film disintegrates around him.
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