The reason this films works as well as it does is because each of it's outlandish, completely surreal scenarios is presented in such a straight-forward, almost deadpan way. What could have been, in other hands, something along the lines of an Alejandro Jodorowsky film, instead comes across like a series of Monty Python sketches filtered through the minimalistic sensibilities of filmmakers like Ulrich Seidl and Tsai Ming-Liang. As a result, the film (thankfully, in my opinion) plays less like an absurdist farce and more like a particularly strange very black comedy. Although I am generally not a fan of films with such an obviously meticulous, very "designed" production design (being a fan of a more spontaneous, natural approach myself), this managed to pull it off chiefly by being just so damn funny. I don't usually look to European films for their humor (being that subtitles rarely translate comedy effectively anyway), but nonetheless this is undoubtedly one of the funniest European films I have seen. In truth, there is very little to the film besides it's parade of eye-catching set pieces (the fairly frequent dialogue comes across mainly as pretentious and is never particularly engaging, although very easy to ignore, and "character" is almost an irrelevant concept in a film like this), so it's a good thing that just about every single one of them work brilliantly.
Review of Songs from the Second Floor
