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‘Objet a’ Review: Ann Oren’s Wickedly Kinky Curiosity Eroticizes Everything From Mushrooms to Mushroom Cuts
Ann Oren’s “Objet a” is reviewed as a strange, sensual and deliberately provocative follow-up to her 2022 film “Piaffe”. The film follows two highly controlled hand surgeons whose private desires disrupt their orderly lives, using fetishism and erotic curiosity to explore the objects and absences that drive desire. The critic considers it a more ambitious and polished work that should appeal to cult-minded arthouse audiences.
Aenne Schwarz plays Ingeborg, a precise but compulsively thieving surgeon, while Louis Hofmann plays Adam, her submissive partner, who enjoys being treated as an object. Their carefully compartmentalised relationship is shaken when Ingeborg steals a cigarette lighter, falls while fleeing and fractures her tibia, threatening months away from work. The 95-minute German-language film premiered in Locarno’s main competition, and Oscilloscope Laboratories has acquired US rights.
In short
- A provocative arthouse drama about desire, control and fetishism.
- Two surgeons’ hidden compulsions destabilise their disciplined lives.
- Critics see it as an ambitious step forward for Ann Oren.
Explained simply
Ann Oren is a German filmmaker whose earlier film, Piaffe, established her interest in unusual forms of desire and bodily experience. Objet a continues that approach through two hand surgeons whose carefully ordered lives conceal private urges.
Aenne Schwarz plays Ingeborg, a surgeon who compulsively steals, and Louis Hofmann plays Adam, her partner, who enjoys taking a submissive role. Their relationship is shaped by fetishism: desires attached to particular objects, acts or sensations.
The film’s title refers to an idea associated with psychoanalysis: an elusive object or absence that helps drive desire. That idea gives context to the film’s focus on how ordinary things and experiences can take on erotic meaning.
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