The Golden Glove

I watch movies for a lot of different sensations, but “visceral nausea“ is not on the list. 'The Golden Glove' is a well-shot film (despite a deliberately grotesque aesthetic) that might be fun for transgression hungry viewers. I'm not that edgy - to me, this film is nothing more than a solipsistic group analysis session in which the audience is held hostage, believing there's a point to it all.

- Jake Watt

Read Jake's full article...

https://www.maketheswitch.com.au/article/review-the-golden-glove-repellent-and-pointless

The entirely convincing Jonas Dassler is almost unrecognisable here in this really quite uncomfortable to watch story of sexual and societal depravity. He is Honka, a man who lives in an attic room where he on occasion entertains ladies of all ages, shapes and sizes that he has either encountered in his favourite bar ("The Golden Glove") or on the street - often quite literally, or just about anywhere else their search for booze might take them. A bit like "Sweeney Todd", though - these women tend not to leave in anything like the state they arrived in. Indeed, in most cases leaving was more like eaving as the eaves of his roof were where their dismembered corpses usually ended up. That's not a spoiler, we know all along the fate of his guests so this isn't so much a mystery about a serial killer as an observation of the behaviour of a man with precisely no moral compass thriving in a sub-culture where people come and go without being missed, and where he can indulge his vodka-fuelled peccadilloes at will. At will and at willie are not quite the same thing though, and as a fair amount of brewer's droop starts to kick in this frustrates not just him but his expectant friends. Just how long can this go on before someone cottons on, or even develops a sense of smell? The pub itself is also a source of curiosity throughout the film with it's regulars divided into groups of largely unsavoury characters - some with two nick-names, and one called anus who has no idea what that actually meant (in English, of course). There is one scene towards the end where I felt the woman he had in his sights might well do for him instead, and that was quite funny to watch in a dark and filthy sort of fashion, but otherwise the brutality is maybe just a little too repetitious to be effective after a while and with virtually nothing to take from the dialogue I did feel a bit like a prurient fly on the wall watching people that I'd happily cross the street to avoid. Perhaps that is Fatih Akin's point. We don't care about the underbelly of society nor of the people who inhabit the grotty tenements and bedsits and so that's quite possibly why Honka gets away with his crimes for such a long time. There are a lot of characterisations for us to absorb here and I found a second viewing helped with some of the nuances I'd missed first time around. It's not an easy watch and after about half an hour it'd be quite easy to become distracted - but it is worth a couple of hours as a tale of how the other half live - and die.