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KRISANA (FALLEN) by Fred Kelemen
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The art-house has rarely looked as rigorously, unapologetically forbidding as it does in the work of Berlin-born Fred Kelemen. True to form, his Krisana offers an extended meditation on suicide, dragging its heels alongside a gloomy archivist as he investigates the life of a woman he believes may have taken a plunge in the river. The imagery (shot on digital video) is a pea-soup of pitch blacks and dirty whites; the soundtrack a storm of industrial noise; the dialogue a portentous reflection on our place in the great scheme of things. ("Man has lost his way," points out one helpful copper. "We are living like animals.") Meanwhile, Kelemen's film-noir narrative gives some impetus to his existential musings, while the air of ennui is occasionally punctured by a twist of lugubrious wit. Even so, this is one for the purists.

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