The City Below by Christoph Hochhäusler

The City Below (« Unter dir die stadt »), the latest film by the director Christoph Hochhäusler, is due to be screened at 11.30 a.m. and  4:30 p.m. today. Selected for Un Certain Regard, this feature film is about the adulterous relationship between Roland and Svenja. Later on in the film, we discover that Roland is actually the manager of a major bank where Svenja’s husband works. Determined to take things further with her, he organises the transfer of her husband to another office behind her back.

The City Below is the third feature by the German filmmaker and the second film he has presented at the Festival de Cannes. The first was The Impostor (« Falscher Bekenner »), which was also selected for Un Certain Regard in 2005. “What’s good about cinema is that you can contemplate the world from the outside,” says Christoph Hochhäusler, for whom the primary role of cinema is contemplative, even anthropological. In his previous film, he already dealt with one of the ills of modern society: solitude. With The City Below, the German director focuses more deeply on the complexity of human relationships in these societies in which the notion of power and manipulation prey on loving relationships.