Slumming

I recently saw this at the 2007 Palm Springs International Film Festival. Suppose your life and surroundings are changed and it affects how you see and want to change your life? Two of the films characters find this out. One on an unwitting journey to the Czech border and another on a journey to Jakarta, Indonesia. Sebastian (August Diehl) is a 20-something yuppie from a wealthy family in Vienna who enjoys discovering the seediest bars in Vienna and rating them along with his friend Alex (Michael Ostrowski) who also enjoys meeting women on the internet and taking up skirt pictures with his cell phone. Kallman (Paulus Manker) is a down and out poet and intellectual who has fallen into an alcoholic binge and is selling poems on the street and stealing for drinking money. Passed out on a park bench he is picked up and dropped off at a Czech border town by Sebastian and his reluctant partner Alex. Pia (Pia Hierzegger) who is a school teacher and Sebastian's latest girlfriend learns of what they did and sets out with one of Kallman's lady friend drinking buddies (Maria Bill) to bring Kallman back to Vienna. This is a black comedy and a drama about redemption with a fine performance from Manker as the central character. Director/writer Michael Glawogger directs in a story he co wrote with Barbara Albert who is also a writer/director. It's worth a look and I would give it a 7.0 out of 10.