The shadow of Michael Haneke looms heavily in “Human Factors,” as French-German couple Nina (Sabine Timoteo) and Jan (Mark Waschke), tired of the advertising agency they co-own, take their kids Max and Emma to an idyllic off-season retreat for a seaside vacation. Trouble follows them there as burglars storm through their country house, unseen by anyone except Nina, and soon after exit without taking anything. The police are called to investigate, but the evidence doesn’t add up, the account Nina gives them is as shaky as her marriage to Jan. Director Ronny Trocker plays around with truth and perception, and that’s what this movie is about; the notion that we’re all incapable of understanding each other’s points of views, there’s a slant to everything. Trocker deals with these themes through the lenses of a middle-class family crumbling from within. He invents his own rules for the narrative via a nonlinear structure that kept me guessing until the final shot. The creeping discontent oozing from this film is that of watching each family member’s perspective on things and realizing that they are all living in their own realities.
SCORE: B+