The Ground Beneath My Feet

The Ground Beneath my Feet got good critical reviews so take my own middling review with a grain of salt. My main problem with the admittedly competent film is that it failed to grab and hold my entire attention. And I saw it in theaters so I was largely free of external distractions. Yet still, the movie felt disconnected, chilly and slow. The fact that I was able to notice something like how good the sound mixing was is unfortunately a detriment to the film, not a testament. I never got lost in the story The Ground Beneath My Feet was telling.

The film follows Carolina “Lola” Wegenstein. Lola is good at her job but something of a workaholic. She is also in a relationship with her boss Elise. Lola’s sister Conny has paranoid schizophrenia. Most of the year Conny is functional but like clockwork, once a year Conny suffers a breakdown. This time, Conny is saved from an overdose and placed in a mental institution. Lola tries to juggle her work life and her sister though usually her work is her first priority. However, Lola starts to receive impossible, mysterious phone calls from Conny. The stress piles on as Lola tries to stay afloat in her life.

The Ground Beneath My Feet shows a lot of talent in a lot of areas. The cinematography and shot composition is often striking. The sound mixing is incredible. The performances are also great, particularly from lead actress Valerie Pachner. The problem is that no matter how much talent is displayed behind and in front of the camera, the story these talented people are telling didn’t grab me.

First of all, there is so much focus on Lola’s work in business within the film. It’s tedious. Yes, to a degree it helps us get a feel for this character and her life. However, it is by far the least interesting aspect of the film yet the one that gets the most amount of screen time. The business aspect ends up seeming like almost the focus of the film, not Lola’s struggles with her sister, lover or her own mental health. This emphasis is misplaced. Does anyone enjoy hearing about the inner workings of business? I certainly don’t.

I also found a great deal of plot points and themes went unresolved within The Ground beneath My Feet. The third act amounted to nothing on so many of these plot lines. The beginning of the film sets up a lot of plot points which slowly peter off as the movie progresses. But even as it begins to narrow in on the major themes, it still somehow ends up unresolved. There is significantly more tension in the first half of the film than the second. The Ground Beneath My Feet feels like it winds down instead of winding up as it progresses.

The queer aspect of the film is unremarkable for better or worse. Like everything in this film, I found it a bit dull. However, it is also a representation of a queer lead that has no emphasis on issues relating to sexuality. That Lola’s lover is female isn’t an issue. Personally, this is a positive for me. I like seeing this normalization of queer relationships where not once is it even brought that Lola’s lover is a woman. This doesn’t save the fact that like everything else in the film, the relationship is dull and doesn’t really culminate to anything but it’s still nice to see such a matter of fact representation of a queer character and relationship.

I ended The Ground Beneath My Feet thinking I would forget this film in a month’s time. That was too generous. It has been less than 24 hours since seeing the movie that I am writing this review and I’ve already forgotten quite a lot of it. I can’t call The Ground Beneath My Feet a bad film. It’s too competent for that. There is a lot of talent on display in the film. I’d say the majority of people who worked on this movie are very good at their respective jobs. Unfortunately, all that talent can’t make this movie as interesting as it should have been nor can it fix the inherent problems in its story.

Overall rating: 6.1/10

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