Don't Follow Me Around
(Komm mir nicht nach)
With Jeanette Hahn, Susanna Wolff, Misel Maticevic.
Germany, 2011, digital video, color, 88 min.
German with English subtitles.
Christoph Hochhäusler’s contribution to the trilogy centers around the criminal’s escape and the manhunt it engenders. The film cuts back and forth between Molesch’s desperate flight and the sleuthing of the police detective who had previously fingered him for murder. As each tries to outwit the other, we begin to see how their respective lives as parent and child contribute to their present situations. Hochhäusler’s habitual fascination for risky and ambiguous behavior is guided by his restless and assertive camera, which almost seems to pursue a detailed investigation of its own, its elegantly smooth movements revealing the world to be a a set of opaque signs that subverts any search for answers with further questions. In many ways the characters seem themselves to be signs, players who are assigned roles that do not explain their actions; instead they determine them. – DP