Ruletista (2024) by Lukas Valenta Rinner - Review

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by Lukas Valenta Rinner

grade: 7.5

Gloomy colours, a particularly dark atmosphere, minimalist electronic music and slow camera movements (which, in fact, never show us death directly or up close) make Ruletista a merciless yet ironic and grotesque short film, which stands out above all for its wit and originality. At the Viennale 2024.

No time to die

Director Bianca Gleissinger had already told us about the unique Alterlaa housing project in her documentary 27 Storeys (2023). And while such a reality, such a sort of satellite town within the lively and cosmopolitan Vienna, immediately struck us as somewhat alienating and at the same time magnetically fascinating, it must be acknowledged that it would also be a perfect setting for a horror film, or at any rate for a dark and mysterious work. This is what director Lukas Valenta Rinner had in mind when he set here his short film Ruletista, which premiered at the Viennale 2024.

Two dancers dance inside a flat accompanied by Rita Pavone’s song Io che amo solo te. From their window we can clearly see that we are, indeed, in the Alterlaa housing project. From the building opposite theirs, we suddenly see from afar that someone is falling down from the balcony. And already this first, unexpected scene hits us like a punch to the stomach. A woman (played by Margarethe Tiesel) walks down the avenues of Alterlaa holding the carcass of her cat wrapped in wrapping paper. Once in her flat, the woman tries everything to kill herself, first with sleeping pills, then by hanging herself and then throwing herself off the balcony. Miraculously surviving all three attempts, she is rescued by a custodian working there, who advises her to join his group to follow a ‘special therapy’ for those who, like her, no longer want to live.

Gloomy colours, a particularly dark atmosphere, minimalist electronic music (by Kimin Jim and Jongho You) and slow camera movements (which, in fact, never show us death directly or up close) make this interesting Ruletista a merciless and at the same time ironic and grotesque short film, which, while inspired by what has been done in the rest of the world, stands out above all for its wit and originality.

In the residential area of Alterlaa, the life of the inhabitants is perfectly organised. Here, in fact, there are swimming pools, gyms, but also rooms in which one can devote oneself to modelling or handicrafts. The camera, strictly static, films these environments one by one, while each of the people present is perfectly still, looking in the direction of the camera itself. And so, immediately, the cinema of Ulrich Seidl comes to mind, with all its subtle and often cruel irony, which here, in Ruletista, finds its own, personal declination.

Lukas Valenta Rinner was thus able to fully exploit many of the potentialities that such a reality has to offer when one wants to make it a (co)protagonist on the movie screen. Excellent Margarethe Tiesel, never exaggerated and always credible in her roles, then did the rest, making this Ruletista a pleasant surprise within the programme of this Viennale 2024. There is always time to die. What if, in the meantime, an unusual ‘game’ could awaken a new, dangerous enthusiasm in us?