Three women laze around German-speaking cities in the languid third feature from the indie director Ted Fendt.
“Outside Noise,” a sleepy excursion around Vienna and Berlin, is the third feature from the indie director Ted Fendt (“Classical Period”), and his first to take place mostly in Europe. Its focal characters are young women listlessly pursuing various, indeterminate creative callings. Fendt is more interested in tracing the architecture of their ennui than considering its cause or consequences, and the movie observes their leisure with a warm gaze.
We spend most of our time with Daniela (Daniela Zahlner), a literary type partial to flowing linen clothing and messy buns. Natural light filters into her petite Vienna flat, where she suffers insomnia by night and aimlessness by day. The movie begins with Daniela as a New York City tourist. Upon her return to Europe, she stays with her friend Mia (Mia Sellmann) in Berlin, where Daniela reads perched on a windowsill, strolls the city and meets Mia’s graduate-school classmate, Natascha (Natascha Manthe), who asks Daniela, perhaps inappropriately, to lend her some money.
This may sound like the beginnings of a plot, but “Outside Noise” hardly revisits the episode. While Fendt previously powered films with awkward humor, here the mood is ruminative. (Alongside Fendt, Zahlner, Sellmann and Manthe are credited as writers.) Fendt shoots on lovely 16-millimeter and 35-millimeter film, and the movie’s texture, along with the women’s musings, at times recall several female-led features from the late 1970s and early ’80s: “Girlfriends,” “Smithereens” and “Variety.” Although less vibrant than those predecessors, Fendt’s film is equally committed to capturing the aura of an independent city dweller finding her way.
Outside Noise
Not rated. In English and German, with subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 1 minute. In theaters.
Source: Movies - nytimes.com
