Review of Models

"Models" is an Austrian film from 1999, so this will soon have its 20th anniversary. The writer and director is Ulrich Seidl, one of Austria's most known and most successful filmmakers and he made this movie a while before his lauded Paradise trilogy. The title already tells us what the film is about, namely models, namely four of them, which is a bit of a pity for audience members like myself who prefer brunettes. The film certainly looks like a documentary for the most part, even if (I believe) the people in here are all fictitious characters. You see that from the fact that they have acted in other (Seidl) films and also that you see stuff that you would not see in a real documentary like the models being sleazy and willing to get humiliated by naughty gross photographers or also that you see the models use drugs, something that, if these were real characters and real abuse, would get them to jail right away. And one character says for example in one scene something like "don't tell anybody", so obviously he is pretending that this film is not seen hundreds of thousands of people. But even if I like some of the other works I have seen from Seidl, I never enjoyed this one here. Maybe the reason is that everybody in here is just very unappealing, physically and also in terms of their character. But maybe this was Seidl's intention: to depict a profession and society and branch that you really do not want to be a part of at all. If so, then he certainly succeeded. I must say that the film dragged a lot for me and I really did not care for any of the quartet overall. What also did not help is that this film runs for almost 2 hours and I personally felt it had many lengths. It ended up being a definite contender for my least favorite Seidl film from what I have seen so far and level-wise (in terms of quality) it is nowhere near the great stuff he has done in recent years. I don't recommend the watch.