Berlin Review: Ruth Beckermann’s ‘Mutzenbacher’
The real star of Mutzenbacher, an austere Austrian documentary screening in the Encounters strand at the Berlin Film Festival, is a gaudy but once elegant settee that has seen better days, and likely even service in a 1970s pornographic movie (it is described early on as looking like “a former erotic sofa”). Fittingly, it is literally a casting couch for director Ruth Beckermann, who entertains a parade of men aged between 16 and 99 — her specific criteria — as she holds an open audition for a role in her latest film.