Dawn Breaks Behind the Eyes

 Half psychodrama, half 60's/early 70's sleazy euro-horror, half surrealist, psychedelic freakout... Dawn Breaks Behind the Eyes is a movie of many, many halves, most of them good, all fused together with a huge amount of style.

 Eva (Luisa Taraz) and Dieter (Frederik von Lüttichau) are an unhappily wedded couple. They're visiting a castle Eva inherited from her rich family, with Dieter complaining bitterly about how they never get any real money from them; Eva is the artistic, pensive one while Dieter is brash, whiny and resentful. They talk at each other, not to each other, unwilling to engage.

 As their mutual loathing becomes more and more apparent, both of them have separate, seemingly supernatural experiences with other people in the castle. Things come to a head with a gleefully over-the top bit of gore which literalizes some of the movie's themes, and then the film suddenly pulls out the rug out from you, introducing a separate couple played by Anna Platen and Jeff Wilbusch, and a load more characters besides (which never get to be more than background color).

 It's an intoxicatingly rich movie, with gorgeous visuals and a well-written script that might not cohere narratively but weaves its themes tightly. Director (and co-writer, along with Lilli Villányi) Kevin Kopacka is not nearly as worried about plot as he is by texture and about examining his characters' relationship from multiple angles, something he achieves by repeatedly switching tacks as reality is seemingly rewritten.
 Where he arrives is not ultimately important, though the 'explanation', when it arrives, is more coherent and satisfying than I thought it'd be. Interpretation is key here, and the script seems uninterested in providing any clear answers. Ultimately it's not so much a horror movie as a supernatural puzzle we're not meant to solve, just to poke at.

 For all its memorable imagery, there's just one bright red punctuation mark of a gore scene which is quickly recontextualized, and all the genre elements are more surreal than true horror. It's an easy movie to recommend to anyone who's watched any, say, Mario Bava but it's harder to say what someone who's unfamiliar with its influences might say. I'd recommend it anyways if you're feeling adventurous: It's only seventy-something minutes long, it oozes effortless cool, and it's got the most fun end credits I've seen in a long time.