Fresh out of high school, Armin remains with his solidly middle-class parents while he searches halfheartedly for an occupation. He fails his job interviews because of his inability either to muster a minimum of enthusiasm or to express a sense of self that he apparently lacks. At the same time, Armin leads a second life in which he mails anonymous confessions of crimes that he may or may not have committed and indulges in erotic encounters with a mysterious gang of bikers. The plot of I Am Guilty suggests a revisiting of Rebel Without a Cause by way of Gus van Sant, but the film’s brilliance is its ability to suspend the distinction between Armin’s fantasies and reality. Hochhäusler leaves open the question of whether his protagonist’s obsessions with guilt, humiliation and abjection are the problem or the solution to his lack of identity. – DP