“Peacock” (“Pfau – Bin ich echt?”)
(Austria/Germany)
Metacritic (9/10), Letterboxd (4.5/5), Imdb.com (9/10), TMDB.com (9/10); Imdb.com critics review
In this age of increasingly untrustworthy AI, rampant fake news and unabashedly self-serving social media, it’s becoming ever more difficult for many of us to distinguish what’s “real” and what isn’t these days, almost as if we’re stuck in a frightening new Orwellian paradigm. That’s significant, not only for how we perceive existence, but even in terms of how we experience and respond to it. In fact, these circumstances might even be looked upon as a metaphysical or existential nightmare. So it is for Matthias (Albrecht Schuch), who works for a Vienna-based organization known as MyCompanion, a business that enables clients to hire individuals to serve as professional impersonators or stand-ins for those in need – any need – as conditions warrant. He has become so proficient at this that his services are in high demand. However, Matthias has become so adept at his work that he’s begun to lose himself in it, unsure of where his job leaves off and his own reality begins, and that inherent uncertainty comes with consequences. For instance, it has seriously impacted his relationship with his significant other, Sophia (Julia Franz Richter), who claims that she doesn’t know him anymore. On top of that, Matthias increasingly finds himself embroiled in dubiously complicated cases involving the likes of a bullied wife (Maria Hofstätter) who’s looking for coaching on how to argue more effectively with her overbearing husband (Branko Samarovski) and a wealthy senior (Tilo Nest) who’s looking for someone to stand in as his absent estranged son at his lavish 60th birthday soiree, an event couched in an underlying agenda cooked up by the guest of honor. And, as the protagonist desperately seeks answers to better know his true self and to cope with these ever-maddening circumstances, he feels like he’s becoming hopelessly lost, frequently unable to discern or explain himself. He also unfairly becomes the unwitting object of conjecture, ridicule and blame from outsiders, including uninvolved third parties, who generally misinterpret conditions and see them through their own distorted (and often-shallow) filters, making them unconscious embodiments of unbridled pretention, not unlike superficial, proudly preening peacocks, as one character astutely observes. Writer-director Bernhard Wenger deftly explores these mind-boggling scenarios with delicately applied dry wit and hilarious situational humor, showing more than telling what’s driving his narrative’s objectives. At the same time, though, there’s a deadly seriousness beneath the laughs, making insightful observations about the blurred lines of reality and fantasy, in addition to scathingly symbolic references to social media toxicity and the undue judgmentalism that often tags along for the ride. What’s more, the filmmaker skillfully shows how all of these questionable, seemingly disparate elements ultimately tie together, leaving Matthias (not to mention the rest of us) with a noxious new form of existence that has us wondering about our very nature and what to believe about our fundamental sense of reality. “Peacock” is a smartly written, intelligently crafted debut feature from this gifted filmmaker, one that often reminds me of inventive, quirky pictures like director Ruben Östlund’s “The Square” (2017). It’s a picture that simultaneously entertains, enlightens and inspires in eye-opening ways – provided we leave ourselves open to that possibility. And, in this day and age, we had better do that if we want to avoid consequences that, frankly, could be too troubling to think about.