There is not a moment during the screening of Stroke of Luck in which the audience can really catch its breath. Everything unfolds very quickly and the protagonist’s situation – which, at first, seemed so idyllic as to seem somewhat artificial – inevitably takes a turn for the worse, with corpses to be hidden and welcome noir atmospheres contrasting with the evocative and contemplative views of Vienna.
It is bodies dancing lightly and finally free, as well as close-ups of suffering faces or teenage girls attending a swimming lesson that characterise Talea. And Katharina Mückstein’s camera knows perfectly well how to characterise them, making them, on screen, incredibly alive and pulsating.
In Little Big Voice – a television film directed by Wolfgang Murnberger in 2015 – good feelings, in the end – and as one can well imagine – always triumph. And they do so, again and again, in an almost forced way, with overly abrupt narrative twists. So abrupt that they almost lose credibility.