The Practice of Love

Judith is journalist. She investigates an unsolved fatal accident in a Viennese subway station and comes accross an international gun running organization. Her affair with Dr. Fischoff, a physician, is not doing well and Judith sleeps badly and has terrible nightmares. She has another friend, Alfons Schlögel, an industrialist, who is also involved in the gun running affair. Slowly, Judith gets an idea of what is happening.

Video control in subway stations and in street traffic, tapes and cameras are very important for the structure of the film. Mediocrity, hypocrisy and violence are the film´s main themes. Valie Export deals with them on private, social and media levels, adhering to the techniques of video avant-garde.



The Practice of Love could be termed a feminist thriller about a woman investigator who uncovers a murder conspiracy, and who is in the end thwarted by a combination of governmental and private power. The film could also be seen as an essay about the impossibility of freeing oneself from the tangle of electronically and socially determined gazes and the insufficiency of language in general. Seeing it as a comedy about perception would also be possible, or even a lesson about the construction of time and space in film images. But all these possibilities (like in a “good” mainstream film) do not add up to a mythical whole with a clear separation of text and subtext, plot and subplot; it maintains its contradictory and fragmentary nature, clearly showing the “experimental” as a space where experience is possible.

(Georg Seeßlen)

Orig. Title
Die Praxis der Liebe
Year
1984 - 1985
Country
Austria
Duration
90 min
Director
VALIE EXPORT
Category
Fiction
Orig. Language
German
Subtitles
English
Credits
Director
VALIE EXPORT
Script
VALIE EXPORT
Cinematography
Jörg Schmidt-Reitwein
Music
Harry Sokal, Stephen Ferguson
Production
VALIE EXPORT
Actor/Actress
Elisabeth Vitouch, Liane Wagner, Rüdiger Vogler, Adelheid Arndt, Hagnot Elischka
Art Direction
Eichinger & Knechtl
Available Formats
35 mm (Distribution Copy)
Aspect Ratio
1:1,66
Sound Format
stereo
Frame Rate
24 fps
Color Format
colour
Digital File (prores, h264) (Distribution Copy)
DCP 2K flat (Distribution Copy)
Aspect Ratio
1:1,66
Sound Format
stereo
Frame Rate
24 fps
Color Format
colour