“I have a somewhat unorthodox request. But do not be alarmed, I intend nothing sinister.”

Welcome to Gelateria, the debut feature from filmmaking duo Arthur Patching and Christian Serritiello. The film was shot in Berlin (where the pair is based), England, Poland, and Italy and features an international cast of actors. For more info about the filmmakers and the process of bringing this work to life, check out our interview with the filmmakers right here after the review!

There’s this lovely sequence about humans drawn to bodies of water that’s been lodged in my brain for a decade, although the author’s name has long since evaporated. Maybe it was Annie Dillard? Maybe it doesn’t matter? Anyhow, it describes how we are drawn to the shores of lakes and oceans because they are boundaries. These physical boundaries emulate the boundaries we constantly see in art: the edge of a painting, a chapter break, a cliffhanger at the end of an episode of prestige TV that heightens what came before and builds anticipation for what comes next. Our lives don’t have chapter breaks to divide up our experience, but we can come to the water.

Gelateria opens with a man screaming into the distance. He stands on a rocky outcropping that juts into a blank blue sea, fog meeting horizon in the distance so that a milky wash blurs any hard lines. He is out at the edge. He is feeling that sense of futility, maybe, that his only boundaries are the ones he creates for himself. Here, the idea of meaningful divisions is both highlighted and eradicated.

The exploration of boundaries and chapters is consistent through the film, with a distinct, rhythmic succession of boisterous group settings linked together by solitary figures experiencing various brands of internal angst. We move from an existential barfight (more on that later) to a barbershop full of mysterious phone calls to a yacht party to a violent art opening to a monastery of sorts housed in a windmill to a bingo hall to a funeral in a pub to a prison to an experimental theatre show. The links between settings are often intentionally indecipherable, but the structure is a consistent mooring line in a film where rules and figures feel aloof and strange.

Especially disorienting and adding to the dreamlike, surreal nature of the film as a whole is the rolling deconstruction of an old film standby — the audience surrogate. At the start of the film, just after we leave the man on the dark shore, we are dropped into a train car between a man and the blurred-out face of his estranged lover. The film places us into his shoes, or perhaps this is a trick of our conditioning; nevertheless, we identify with him and begin to suspend disbelief and ease into the tone and mood and rules of the film. He exits the film briefly thereafter, but later on this same actor shows up as a scammed elderly female artist, and then that artist character is quickly replaced by another actor, and then the artist transmutes back into our erstwhile avatar actor. In a film that sneaks credos like “Look at your audience! You have an audience! Nourish them! Give them something of yourself…” through multiple layers of the-play’s-the-thing obfuscation, an unreliable avatar is deliciously bizarre.

The raft of audiovisual experimentations in the film don’t always mesh together into a persuasive gestalt, but they remain fascinating exercises on their own. The handheld camerawork throughout the film is energetic and close-cropped, highlighting the micro-expressions and sweat drops and wide eyes of the talented cast. The sound design is discomfiting and engrossing — at times the sibilance of whispers and the scratching of skin and hair eases you gently into an ASMR reverie. One of my favorite moments is the existential bar fight towards the top of the film. Two childhood friends — one of whom is our unreliable avatar — quarrel and vigorously lean into canned phrases: “Family. Family, that’s what you said we were. Brothers we were. Brothers from another mother, that’s what you used to say to me.” It’s jarring until the entire bar full of patrons gather into the tight shot, all staring straight at you (via the prone, face-punched avatar) and begin to sing: “Wah wah wah waaahhh!” It’s a startlingly weird moment, roping you into a stilted exchange and then popping you on the cheek with a “just kidding!” There are expansions and slow turnings of small moments, such as one of the barbershop callers complaining to a hotel clerk about how he was disturbed, and then whispering to himself (and us, seemingly) “do not disturb” several times, as if weighing its heft.

In one telling sequence on the yacht, a native Italian speaker is hired to come and speak Italian for four party guests. Doesn’t matter what he says, the party host assures the agency. Just Italian. The man arrives and begins to speak while the four guests look on, attentive and slightly agog. At one point, he pauses and asks if they really understand what he’s saying, and the host says no but to keep going. He does, they have a champagne toast, and eventually he leaves. As he’s walking down the hall to leave the yacht, he hears uproarious laughter from the room he’s just left. This moment reads as a comment on the film itself: what are the rules? What is this strange place I’ve walked into, and how should I proceed? Is the joke on me? It’s clear that there is some intention steering the situation, I’m just not exactly privy to what it is.

About halfway through the film, a getaway guy brings an artist to a hotel room. He’s immersed in shadows for a while but then he walks into the light and I recognized his smile, and I thought to myself — what is this? What famous smile is he imitating? Surely it’s something iconic, a Godard smile or a Kubrick smile or something drawn down from the annals of film history smiles, and I sat with that thought for several minutes before I realized — no! I know where this smile hails from. This is the exact smile that I saw once in a photo on the face of my first love’s now husband. It was a weird, ultra-specific memory, this tiny element that I saw in passing (or, who am I kidding, tortured myself with) probably six years ago, but the film somehow amplifies this sort of weirdly specific, obscure rumination. The dream winds you through rooms full of people that you feel like you might know, but not well, and not since long ago.

Just desserts:

My favorite exchange in the film: “What kind of car is this?” “A getaway car.”
The bingo announcing, delivered like a mystic invocation, is entrancing as hell.
I pray to whatever gods can hear me that I naturally end up in an accordion dance party in a funereal pub at some point in my life. Need!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Interview with Hyperreal Film Club and Arthur Patching, one of the film’s directors:

Hyperreal Film Club: Tell us a bit about yourself and Christian. What was it like heading up your first feature film? What does the process of collaboration look like for the two of you?

Arthur Patching: We have known each other since A-level art class when we were both 16 years old in England; we found we were talking about the same artists and admiring the same directors. Many years later, of flat-sharing and travelling, of many conversations and watching films, we realised we were kindred spirits. Christian had graduated from the Central School of Speech and Drama and worked as an actor. In the meantime I had graduated from Goldsmiths College of Art and focused my attention on running galleries and being a video artist.

We emigrated to Berlin in 2009 and formed our own production company Tropical Grey Pictures in that year, where we shot some short films and a documentary together and which had some festival success. We always wanted to make a feature but we knew we were not ready. Christian got cast in the lead role in an award winning experimental filmmaker Thorsten Fleisch’s debut feature film, ‘Flesh City’ and he brought me in to help him produce it. Fortuitously due to Christian, I was able to work with Crispin Glover on his untitled 35mm feature film, where we both acted and helped Crispin to make it in the Czech Republic. We learnt a lot working with both filmmakers and noticed a shift in our sensibilities. We began to find ourselves looking to explore uncharted waters cinematically. We felt it was time to develop this newfound freedom into our first feature film. With the possibility of Brexit looming and with our personal future in Germany suddenly insecure, we believed that it would make sense to give a form to our collective fears - anger, obsessions and unanswered questions and start work on ‘Gelateria’. We had a true story of art theft that couldn’t quite leave our minds, not just physical theft, but theft of the human spirit. It was a very positive and a fun collaboration, both on set and in the editing suite after the shoot. Mostly we agreed, but at times we occasionally questioned things differently, often it got heated but it all came down to us wanting to create something special and mysterious and original that we both hadn’t observed before in cinema.

Working with so many international folks to pull the film together must have been wild! What was the process of casting and crewing up like? What were you looking for in the folks who worked on the film?

After producing a couple of films together we found the people that we wanted to work with - you could say finding your film family, it was a very small team but it was a solid team. We had a great producer (Louise Hamelmann) who was on set everyday working extremely hard to make sure everything ran well and keeping us both on track. My brother (Jack Patching) was the film composer, who worked with some great musicians and created some of his finest work for the film.

The film was shot over a period of 18 months in segments, in three different countries. At times it could be challenging, however it was thoroughly enjoyable and hopefully that resonates throughout the film.

We really enjoyed casting for the film and had some incredible actors in mind whom Christian had worked with before. For us, being fans of Fellini and Italian neorealist cinema, as well as looking for talent we wanted expressive personalities, striking faces that told stories in themselves. We always looked for passion and commitment, and we were incredibly lucky with our actors in that they were exceptional in terms of talent and dedication. They brought so much to the set, took risks and committed fully in the madness of the world that is Gelateria.

Do you have any advice for aspiring feature filmmakers around funding or any of the other million things it takes to complete a feature film?

It almost sounds clichéd, but don’t listen to other people’s advice, I found that film school friends told me it wasn’t possible to shoot a feature without funding, or a big budget, the usual hurdles that have to be overcome.

If you have something to say, a story to tell, characters to bring to life, or a place to express your anger - although you have to be able to take the risk yourself, bleed and sweat for the film, then just do it, you will always find a way if you need to channel the creativity.

We love hearing about all the weird or improvised stuff that happens on set! Got any stories for us like that?

Sorry, I am not one for telling or sharing weird stories that happen on set. I have found myself on many film sets and always felt like there was a certain mystery and magic missing and the actors always had to have marks to hit and everything seemed preconceived and too mechanical. We are both fans of John Cassavetes and the films he made and respected his methods of filmmaking and working with actors.

We mainly worked with improvisation. We always worked around the actors allowing them and even the background actors the freedom that if they had an impulse to do or try something we welcomed that they ran with it, as long as it wasn’t dangerous and was respectful to others.

We opened the door for chaotic elements to occur on set, which allowed us all to sculpt the chaos, which brought out the very best in the performances.

What, to you, makes a really powerful image/scene/moment, and how do you translate that from your head to what we see on screen?

For me it is an image, scene, or moment that stays with me long after I have watched the film, and inspires me to question, or think differently than I did before.

The barking bourgeois bohemians scene on the private yacht came from a dream I had and told Christian the next day. He loved it and then we started to analyse it and play with it; we weren’t sure at this point where it would fit in the film, but we believed it to be a loaded scene with a lot to say and playful to experiment with. We would find the faces that would inhabit the yacht, play with showing the public and the private spheres of the character, introduce the chaos I mentioned before and some humour. We always wanted to infuse the fabric of the film scene with the energy of genuine creativity and spirit; the end result played better than I had dreamed.

What's next for you?

I am currently working on some new video art works and looking for gallery representation (but not from a gallery on a remote island). You can check my work out at www.arthurpatching.com

Christian is currently editing a short film that he directed called “An Approximation of their Barbarous Manners” and his band The Woolverstones have just released their debut single, ‘A Song for Harlequins.’ on the Friendly Folk Records label.

When and how can folks watch this movie?

‘Gelateria’ has also been selected for Mostra Internazionale del Cinema di Genova in Italy and Cine Pobre Film Festival in Mexico at the end of this year. We aim to distribute the film in 2021 after its festival run.

GELATERIA + Filmmaker Interview