London

Bobby is constantly in the car, driving back and forth on the highway that connects Vienna and Salzburg. Different people travel the same route. Bobby drives them to share the cost of gas and talks to them along the way: a soldier questioning what it means to fight; a supermarket intern visiting family; an academic researching the history of the road; a queer woman about to get married. During the drive, a multitude of different trajectories, different accents, and different stories (mostly true) intertwine. Bobby listens, but also tells about himself, about his youth, about aging, about a comatose friend who is the reason for all of his travels. Mountains and forests alternate, punctuated by intersections, barriers, and bridges; the quality of light changes with the seasons. Neither documentary nor outright fiction, London is a quiet political portrait of today’s Europe, its in-between spaces, and those who pass through them.

In London, car rides become the apparent focus of the film, but this is a deception – they are filmed entirely in a studio. The car thus becomes a new film apparatus, driven by the illusion of mobility, relying on the persistent and meticulously documented relationship between film and road. The atmosphere of Bobby’s Range Rover shapes both the perception of the landscape and the flow of the conversation. The careful placement of cameras, the alternation of shots and countershots, as well as views through the windshield, leave plenty of space for long dialogues based on hours of semi-improvised conversations with amateurs. Brameshuber establishes a careful concentration and a calm state in which interpersonal exchanges push reality towards extraordinary lucidity. Little by little, the interior of the car becomes a refuge where introspection mixes with reflection and hospitality – the key concept in the time-space of the motorway, at whose both ends fascist ideologies loom.

Within the landscape that authoritatively frames perception and organizes the flow, European contradictions come to the fore. The car, a motionless capsule at the heart of the general movement, becomes a discreet but powerful fly in the ointment. Of a simple, but radical formal structure, this hybrid film, through the small gestures of the protagonists that speak multitudes, defying everyday rejections and doubts, points to the importance of sharing. It is a film that is not rushed and that shows how generous time can be.