Gastón Solnicki’s latest feature, A Little Love Package, is an experimental tribute to Vienna starring Carmen Chaplin and Angeliki Papoulia.
The film takes place in 2019 just after a smoking ban in indoor public settings comes into effect, disrupting part of Kaffeehaus culture in Vienna. The film depicts one particular restaurant now bare of patrons as the lingering smoke wafts away. The owner, Nikolaus, continues managing the restaurant that has been in his family for generations and maintains his daily morning routine eating a boiled egg. He discusses interesting facets of the restaurant, such as the bowling alley in the basement and the way his family used the restaurant to help hide Jews during World War II.
Against this backdrop, Angeliki (Angeliki Papoulia) searches for an apartment to buy in Vienna with the help of her realtor/interior designer friend, Carmen (Carmen Chaplin). Carmen asks Angeliki pointed questions about what she’s looking for in order to help narrow their search. However, after every apartment they visit, Angeliki finds something to complain about—the tiles are the wrong colour, or the floors creak, or it’s too close to a restaurant. Carmen is increasingly frustrated by Angeliki’s excuses and eventually confronts Angeliki about wasting her time. Carmen accuses Angeliki of simply not wanting to part with her money, and insists it’s better spent on an apartment than gathering dust under the bed. Eventually, Carmen comes around and purchases a spacious historic apartment with high ceilings, tons of light, and beautiful wood furnishings. However, she remains somewhat emotionally impassive throughout the process and the film as a whole.
The women’s search for an apartment is frequently interrupted by segues into other moments of life in Vienna and abroad. The segment in which we meet Nikolaus and learn about his restaurant is perhaps the most cohesive of these asides. Other times, the film offers a compilation of brief moments—a boy operates a remote-controlled sailboat on a pond; a girl and a (different) boy observe a man in an underground brick room preserving huge wheels of cheese; the girl meets with a piano instructor in hopes of becoming her student; a scientist observes meteorites in a museum; people gather in a restaurant after hours to secretly drink, smoke and socialize; kids use the underground bowling alley. All these snippets of life are vaguely connected by the people who populate them, as they occasionally cross paths, as well as by voiceover narration from writer Mario Bellatin. There is no deeper exploration into these side characters and no traditional narrative built around them. Instead the film approaches their onscreen moments as a cumulative glimpse into life in Vienna.
The film significantly shifts its narrative approach in the later half, in which the film focuses on Carmen’s visit with her family in Málaga. The visit is rife with conflict as Carmen and her sisters argue about how to care for their aging parents, and Carmen’s young daughter digs her heels in against the idea of moving to Málaga. The story offers much narrative and character-driven potential and stands out as a separate entity from the rest of the film. Indeed, it could have been developed as a feature in its own right.
Solnicki’s approach with A Little Love Package is an innovative experiment in storytelling that sometimes feels too fragmented. The film also styles itself, in part, as a “classic comedy,” which is a confusing choice of descriptor at odds with the film’s experimental style and subtle comedic moments. But perhaps something gets a little lost in translation. The cinematography is classically beautiful, as filmed by acclaimed cinematographer Rui Poças.
A Little Love Package has its world premiere at this year’s Berlin International Film Festival as part of the Encounters section.