MUTZENBACHER

An audition for men aged between 16 and 99. There are no props nor make-up, just pure improvisation. All that is required is the willingness to engage openly with the topic and language of the words on the page. No small challenge, since the text in question is the scandalous novel published anonymously in 1906 Josefine Mutzenbacher, or the Life Story of a Viennese Whore, as Told by Herself which, as this film confirms, continues to be the subject of passionate and controversial discussions about desire, even today. What might be world-class pornographic literature for some is seen by others as an abusive depiction of child sexuality. A cinematic experiment poised between imagination and identity that neither negates nor invokes its central taboo. For this reason, it tells us a lot, not least about “#Me” as well as #MeToo.