Horst_In_Translation Review of Hurensohn

Hurensohn (2004)

An interesting premise, but the execution left me wanting for more

[4/10 · 17 June 2017]

"Hurensohn" is a co-production between Austria and Luxembourg from 2004, so only two more years and this movie will already have its 15th anniversary. The director and one of the writers is Michael Sturminger (another one would be the ill-fated Michael Glawogger) and this is probably still his most known work today, perhaps also because of the controversial title. His origin and the nationality of most cast members means that this is a film in the German language. It runs for 85 minutes roughly and takes us into the life of Ozren during several stages of his early life and how he loses his innocence and comes to terms with the fact that his mother is a prostitute. The film tells us right at the very beginning that he killed his mother and the way he says it makes one wonder for the entire film why would he murder his mother and how exactly did he do it. The solution at the very end is relatively simple. Honestly, I must say that while the film had some solid moments overall it is not really working as a convincing character study as a whole and I felt it surprisingly thin, even for a runtime of under 90 minutes. It rarely gets really under the surface and I think the film could have needed one or two interestingly convincing subplots overall and the way how they included the central character's very early years already made it look like there is a bit of filler material in here. So yeah, this one is by no means a failure, but I still feel that it could have been much better than it eventually turned out. Lead actor Lisnic is not too known, but Khamatova who plays his mother has starred in a couple pretty prestigious projects. And Georg Friedrich is in here too and certainly elevates the material a lot in his scenes. He won a German Film Award recently and it seems difficult to find a successful Austrian film from the last 15 years where he does not show up as a part of the cast. As a whole, I give "The Whore's Son" a thumbs-down though. Not recommended and there are many many superior Austrian movies from the 21st century.