When a Vienna museum guard befriends an enigmatic visitor, the grand Kunsthistorisches Art Museum becomes a mysterious crossroads that sparks explorations of their lives, the city, and the ways in which works of art reflect and shape the world.
Vienna in winter provides the sublime setting for this beguiling and often moving treatise on the relationship between art and life. Mary Margaret O'Hara plays Anne, a Canadian visiting the Austrian capital to see an estranged cousin who has lapsed into a coma. There, she forges a platonic friendship with Johann (Bobby Sommer), who translates for her at the hospital, accompanies her on walks, and arranges for her to visit the galleries at the Kunsthistorisches Museum where he works. Occasionally, Anne listens in as a guide (Ela Piplits) lectures on the virtues of the artists exhibited there, but while these orations sometimes miss their mark (along with a tiresome sequence of naked patrons viewing canvas nudes), the performances by the non-professional leads (singer O'Hara is best known for her 1988 album Miss America) are warm and authentic. And by shooting the interiors digitally and the exteriors on 16mm film, director Jem Cohen and his fellow cinematographer Peter Roehsler brilliantly contrast the details in the paintings with the drama, beauty, humour and poignancy of everyday existence.
| role | name |
|---|---|
| Anne | Mary Margaret O'Hara |
| Johann | Bobby Sommer |
| Gerda | Ela Piplits |
| role | name |
|---|---|
| Director | Jem Cohen |
