Opening 20 Feb 2025
Directed by:
Bernhard Wenger
Writing credits:
Bernhard Wenger
Principal actors:
Albrecht Schuch, Anton Noori, Julia Franz Richter, Salka Weber, Theresa Frostad Eggesbø
As we all know, a peacock is a gorgeous bird to look at, but what happens when it starts to screech? In the film Peacock, a comedy-drama by Austrian director Bernhard Wenger, we meet Matthias (Albrecht Schuch) who works for the professional agency “My Companion”. He is for hire to play any person you want him to be: the perfect son, the boyfriend, the father, the rental consultant etc. Matthias has the outfit for every occasion and the perfect books to accompany the role that he is to play for the job. He, in fact, has perfected his roles so well that he has actually lost himself. His true challenge lies in finding himself again before it is too late. It slowly dawns on his wife Sophia (Julia Franz Richter) that he might never be able to stop acting, and she demands that he say what he really thinks over and over again with no response.
The plot is cleverly written and while watch the film, it begs the question, do we know any peacocks in our own lives? Do we know who we are? What is real and what is show? Particularly as we have social media which helps us to judge how well a person performs a task and whether a business has a good rating or not. Wenger’s film asks important questions and forces us to look at ourselves and our society. We need to ask the question: are we able to be true to ourselves or are we influenced by others and in doing so have lost what we value most? Peacock is an excellent film to ponder the meaning of life. (Shelly Schoeneshoefer)
