A nurse from the Ukraine searches for a better life in the West, while an unemployed security guard from Austria heads East for the same reason.As its title infers, Ulrich Seidl's sophomore effort Import/Export tells two stories. The first is that of Olga (Ekateryna Rak), a Ukrainian nurse who moves to Austria in the hopes of finding a better life. Her opposite would be Paul (Paul Hofmann), an Austrian citizen who loses his job as a security guard for a local mall and must go on the road and deliver arcade games and vending machines with his stepfather to pay off his debts. Despite the fact that they never meet and that their monetary situations are quite different, Olga and Paul share a problem for which they are almost consistently punished. To that end, Import/Export is a hard pill to swallow. I have seen the film twice now and was overwhelmed both times with empathy and sorrow not only for the struggles of its two central characters, but also for the dilapidating economic structures that exist in pockets of Eastern Europe that make up much of Paul and Olga's world. Many of the film's settings -- an internet porn parlor, a geriatric hospital, a decaying slum high-rise -- are filled with actual residents, workers, and patients. In the geriatric hospital, where Olga ends up working by film's end, there's a thick fog of mortality that comes from gazing at the patients and witnessing how Olga's basic goodness is prosecuted and prodded by the cynical nurses, save the staff's singular lothario (George Friedrich).
Seidl has now joined an emerging class of gifted Austrian directors along with Götz Spielmann and Nikolaus Geyrhalter. The director spent a year just casting his film and admits that Hofmann and Rak are playing slightly manipulated versions of themselves; neither of them has appeared onscreen before. Often compared to Austrian master Michael Haneke, Seidl here reminds me more of the narrative/documentary hybrids of Jia Zhang-ke, though his view leans towards the intercontinental as compared to Zhang-ke's deeply personal views of his own country.
Despite the general miserabilism of Seidl's vision, there's an abstract hope that exists in the filmmaking. Paul talks about searching for his harmony, something his stepfather finds with money and flirtatious women. Olga sneaks cured meats to one of the more loving patients and holds their hands, even as the wicked head nurse (Maria Hofstätter) berates her for being blonde and reminds her often that she is there to clean and nothing more. Perhaps Paul and Olga are rare specimens, but the fact that they never fully accept cynicism and never seriously consider suicide says something awfully strong about the resilience of humanity.
