Directed by Ina Weisse
Starring Nina Hoss, Ilja Monti, Simon Abkarian, Serafin Mishiev and Jens Albinus

Absorbing German drama The Audition indeed opens with an audition. One of the candidates is 15 year-old Alexander (Ilja Monti in his acting debut), a talented and committed violinist performing to a small group of teachers to gain acceptance into a school for 6 months of tuition. The teachers aren’t unanimous in their decision, but Alexander’s performance has struck a chord with Anna (Nina Hoss). Confident that she can pluck any imperfections from Alexander’s routine and play, Anna is resolute in her decision to take him under her wing and give private lessons. What begins as nurturing tutorials doesn’t stay that way for long though as Anna’s own unfulfilled performance aspirations, her marriage to French husband Philippe (Simon Abkarian) and the frustration with her son Jonas’ (Serafin Mishiev) ability and interest in playing violin begin to take their toll.

I like a good analogy, so here’s a shot at another to broadly sum up this film.

If The Audition were a new musical composition, I would describe it by saying the main chorus becomes quite recognisable and satisfies, but just about every other musical notation feels bizarrely out of tune.

Led by a wunderbar performance from Nina Hoss, who truly strikes a chord of her own in just about every scene she’s in, The Audition succeeds at arousing and then maintaining intriguing perplexity surrounding its immediate trajectory and central character, Anna. The question of for how long this can be sustained will differ person to person, but an equal anchoring to Hoss’s work as well as many scenes depicting the technicalities involved perfecting the use of the violin will certainly help to see you through the second act. Unfortunately, there does come a time when it’s impossible to disregard that each of its strings just aren’t performing harmoniously. A considerable portion of the screenplay and directing attempts to layer the drama and ostensibly humour the film, but are obscure and don’t manage to tie in with the overall story. Without becoming too specific, one scene strongly suggests Anna’s son Jonas is being harmed and her reaction to this is portrayed as being quite integral to evaluating her. Another exhibits great indecision in Anna. There are several more standalone scenes I could mention, but the point I’m making here is that these scenes are more arbitrary than anything else and don’t amount to anything of particular note.

The 2014 Oscar-winning film Whiplash might have you marching to the beat of a different drum, quite literally, but it’s in very similar thematic and plot territory to The Audition and an overall much, much better movie.

The Audition (Das Vorspiel) is screening as part of the German Film Festival across Australia from May 25 to June 20, 2021

Moviedoc thanks Palace, Asha Holmes Publicity and the German Film Festival for the invitation to the screening of this film.

Review by Leigh for Moviedoc

Follow on Twitter – Moviedoc / LIKE on Facebook – @moviedoc13 / Follow on Instagram – moviedoc_melbourne

©