The first clue that all is not well with friends (and fast food connoisseurs) Tan and Javid is that, as they leave a Berlin kebab restaurant which has apparently not passed muster, they have to step over a lot of dead bodies as they go. In a neat move, then, Snowflake establishes key elements in its modus operandi: naturalistic dialogue, strong links with the criminal underworld and a little dash of absurdity which works broadly well with all of the rest. But there’s more. Snowflake is, as a voiceover tells us briefly, a ‘true story’ – well, sort of a true story. It’s coming to us from a point in the near future, actually, and a Berlin where law and order has entirely broken down, so much so that people are left desperately trying to go about their day-to-day business as lunatics and hitmen run the streets. Tan and Javid belong to that world.
It seems at this point as though we’re going to segue into another story altogether – films over the past few years seem to love adding text titles to their different chapters, and we get a few here – but then we cut back unexpectedly to Tan and Javid. In a car they’ve just stolen, Javid finds an incomplete screenplay, stuffed down behind the passenger seat. As he glances through it, he realises something strange: everything he’s reading relates to the scene at the kebab restaurant; every word they exchanged is already right there, on the page. Disconcerted to say the least, the two men decide they have to find the guy whose car they stole, to ask him what the hell is going on. It turns out he’s a dentist (well, I mean, you can’t live on writing!) and he already knows off by heart every word they’re about to say. They take a copy of his updated draft and make a run for it; clearly, whatever is going on has enormous import for them.
Now that it’s clear to us that nothing is as it seems, we revert to the snippet of the new narrative which we glimpsed earlier on. In it, a young girl is looking for a way to avenge the murder of her parents, who were accidentally killed by some of the hitmen who run things in the city. The girl, Eliana, needs to exploit the family’s links to this criminal fraternity in order to make things happen her way. But there are yet other chapters, which are about to intersect with Javid and Tan’s script experience in a series of intriguing ways, as these two try to discern the relationship between screenplay and reality.
It’s always a risky business, making these kinds of films which have been described as ‘meta’: not for nothing did ‘meta’ become an insult fairly soon after it was first used to describe films which for instance step outside the universe of the narrative, suggesting other things at play and, to a certain extent at least, manipulating audience expectations. This approach can lead to great films, but it’s a divisive strategy which can backfire (and lob in some mumblecore elements, as here, to really take a gamble). Happily, Snowflake feels less like it’s aching to show off how self-aware it is and far more interested in telling a weird, unusual story, which helps it to make a success of this approach. There are many things to recommend it. To start with, this is a well-shot and aesthetically-pleasing film, but beyond its good looks it handles its many at first disparate elements with a wry, often subtle humour which works well, never seeming arrogant or smug. Snowflake is organically very funny, and there’s a sense of confident handling, of close control over where the film is going and how the audience might respond. Added in to that mix is some erudite commentary on the creative process – writer’s block, finding an ending, making the story work. Or, is it all about fate?
All of that said, and all of the film’s strengths duly noted, could Snowflake stand to lose some of its two-hour running time, without risking those strengths? Honestly, yes. Two hours is a very long time to juggle all the elements which Snowflake has, and in the last act, the film comes very close to losing some of the suspense and interest it has built up. Happily, this idea about when and how to end things feels like part of the joke/point/central idea about the screenplay anyway, which no doubt helps.
Snowflake is a challenging tale of revenge, counter-revenge and inevitability; punctuated with violence and lofty ideas in equal measure, it’s a film which needs careful following and may well not be for everybody. But, overall, for fans of crime thrillers which have ambitious twists, it’s time well spent, and a credit to the imaginations of directors Adolfo J. Kolmerer and William James, not to mention Arend Remmers – the real writer, only played by an actor in the film. It’s just another one of the ways in which Snowflake pushes the envelope!
Snowflake is available now via Artsploitation Films.