Leading American film critics whose voices are listened to, and, worse, whose opinions are believed, have condemned "Das Haus Der Schlafenden Schönen" (2000), directed by Vadim Glowna, as a filthy concoction even repugnant for dirty little old men.
In reality, the movie follows exactly the intentions of the director (whose statements can be read, if one can read, in the specials of the one and only international DVD version existing). The movie is about the sadness and emptiness of old age, the confrontation of sexual lust with the semiotic world of substitutes, a movie about a transition on whose one end is, in the case of the main character Edmond, played by Glowna himself, the sum of a still ongoing successful life, and on whose other end there is the eternal relapse into silence. The movie plays mainly in a strange kind of brothel, where men can go and are only allowed to watch the beautiful sleeping young womens' bodies. Any communication is excluded, because the girls have been heavily sedated by the strange "Puffmutter", played by the great German star Angela Winkler. Every attempt at waking the girls up - as well as to speak to them when they are met on the street - is "against the law of this house". People who see filthiness in these scenes, when the old man fondles the young unspent bodies, are incapable of understanding that between a wake and a sleeping person there is a con-textural abyss as big as between live and death. And this is said explicitly in the movie. But one could know it from Gotthard Gunther's commentary to the famous scene where Alice stands before the Red King who is sleeping in the grass. How loud Alice cries, there is no way across the con-texture border to the king and vice versa. The same is true for Edmond and the young women. Nothing else is the "Law of the House". It is not a rule, the Madam calls it purposely law, because is it independent of human conventions. We also know that the sleep is the little brother of Death. Just in the time of the movie, the old man stands still on his side of the reality of life, but he knows, soon, he will transgress this border. His transition leads him to transgress. The Art-Nouveau-house is his terminal station. He knows that long before he is going to see what will actually happen to him. However, in this transitional state, lying at the edge of the bed of the young women, the con-texture border between life and death, between awake and sleeping person, between old man and young woman, between the two sexes, he is sentenced to be a mere observer. He is not allowed to participate. The same Edmond is doing when we see him in the beginning of the movie standing at the window of his big industry building: He looks down into the night, where the people and the circulation are busy. He stands there and observes. He does not walk around but uses his car and the chauffeur. It turns out that it is exactly this state of observer which characterizes Edmond's phase of transition. Death is not the end of life, but of observation.
In reality, the movie follows exactly the intentions of the director (whose statements can be read, if one can read, in the specials of the one and only international DVD version existing). The movie is about the sadness and emptiness of old age, the confrontation of sexual lust with the semiotic world of substitutes, a movie about a transition on whose one end is, in the case of the main character Edmond, played by Glowna himself, the sum of a still ongoing successful life, and on whose other end there is the eternal relapse into silence. The movie plays mainly in a strange kind of brothel, where men can go and are only allowed to watch the beautiful sleeping young womens' bodies. Any communication is excluded, because the girls have been heavily sedated by the strange "Puffmutter", played by the great German star Angela Winkler. Every attempt at waking the girls up - as well as to speak to them when they are met on the street - is "against the law of this house". People who see filthiness in these scenes, when the old man fondles the young unspent bodies, are incapable of understanding that between a wake and a sleeping person there is a con-textural abyss as big as between live and death. And this is said explicitly in the movie. But one could know it from Gotthard Gunther's commentary to the famous scene where Alice stands before the Red King who is sleeping in the grass. How loud Alice cries, there is no way across the con-texture border to the king and vice versa. The same is true for Edmond and the young women. Nothing else is the "Law of the House". It is not a rule, the Madam calls it purposely law, because is it independent of human conventions. We also know that the sleep is the little brother of Death. Just in the time of the movie, the old man stands still on his side of the reality of life, but he knows, soon, he will transgress this border. His transition leads him to transgress. The Art-Nouveau-house is his terminal station. He knows that long before he is going to see what will actually happen to him. However, in this transitional state, lying at the edge of the bed of the young women, the con-texture border between life and death, between awake and sleeping person, between old man and young woman, between the two sexes, he is sentenced to be a mere observer. He is not allowed to participate. The same Edmond is doing when we see him in the beginning of the movie standing at the window of his big industry building: He looks down into the night, where the people and the circulation are busy. He stands there and observes. He does not walk around but uses his car and the chauffeur. It turns out that it is exactly this state of observer which characterizes Edmond's phase of transition. Death is not the end of life, but of observation.