Berlinale winners now in the cinema
Online for beginners: Christine (Blanche Gardin) and Marie (Corinne Masiero) “call” Bertrand. Photo: X-Verleih
Marie (Blanche Gardin) has had to sell her furniture on the Internet since the separation from her husband in order to make ends meet. And sublet the empty living room for a dozen Muslims as a prayer room. She has an apprenticeship, but no qualification, and that’s why she has to take on the most impossible (cleaning) jobs, for example with a lazy social parasite (Philippe Rebbot) who lazes around his entire life to care for her son Sylvain (Lucas Mondher ) To be able to give a present for at least his 15th birthday that meets his high standards. What are sneakers with gold-plated laces for a mere 700 euros?
On top of all the evil with the finances, there is of course another more than embarrassing matter: Marie has drunk her frustration in a nightclub, not only being towed away by a young guy (Vincent Lacoste), but also being filmed while having sex . And now he’s asking for a hefty hush money to finance his business studies so that he doesn’t put the sex tape online. This super disaster would finally cost her the respect of her teenage son, which is why she wants to take out an online loan …
Online for beginners: Marie (Corinne Masiero) is blackmailed with her sextape by a business administration student (Vincent Lacoste). Photo: X-Verleih
Bertrand (Denis Podalyès) also has a problem with the global network: his daughter Cathya (Clementine Peyricot) has been the victim of cyber-bullying and stubbornly refuses to go to school or even socialize. He has expanded his locksmith shop into a veritable repair shop and takes care of unusual customer requests such as that of a potential suicide (small, fine episode role for star author Michel Houellebecq). Bertrand has an expensive hobby because he has fallen in love with the “sweet little exotic accent” of the voice of call center employee Miranda at the other end of the world and cannot refuse an offer, no matter how crazy. Bertrand helps his neighbor Marie with the little problems of everyday life, such as the tangled cables of various chargers.
Third in the league is the series junkie Christine (Corinne Masiero), who was an overseer in a nuclear power plant until she became a victim of her streaming addiction: During her working hours, she watched “House of Cards” and overlooked a radioactive leak. Job and husband were gone overnight, now she drives her private taxi “Hollywood VIP Star Car” via Uber – and is annoyed by bad Internet reviews, even though she really does everything for her passengers. And be it to drive twenty kilometers to the supposedly cheapest supermarket or even fifty kilometers to the nearest post office to receive a registered letter.
The befriended trio is fed up with the foreign control caused by the overwhelming power of social media and tech giants and declares war on Silicon Valley. An expert who calls himself “God” (Bouli Lanners) and hacks himself from the top of a wind turbine into the systems of the largest tech giants plays a major, if not decisive, role. Because: “Even God cannot compete with artificial intelligence,” he says. So Bertrand looks for happiness in Mauritius and Marie (“I want my pussy back”) in San Francisco …
Awarded the Silver Bear in the Berlinale 2020 competition, “Online for Beginners” was one of the most successful cinema films in France with over 500,000 viewers in the same year. The French directing duo Benoît Delépine and Gustave Kervern (“Mammuth”, “The day will come”) take the absurdities and stumbling blocks of everyday digital life in this 110-minute social satire, which is very weird by German standards, wonderfully funny and with a large portion of humanity between artificial intelligence, fake reviews and the overpriced costs of so-called free hotlines. This strains the laughing muscles enormously, but can sometimes get on your nerves with this multitude of bankruptcies, bad luck and mishaps.
Due to the corona, “Online for Beginners” is only now coming to our cinemas, in this country it can be seen at Union Bochum, Sweetsixteen Dortmund as well as in the two Essen cinemas, Rio and Filmstudio Glückauf.
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