‘Lust’ Berlinale Review: A Glacial Study of Control and Collapse

The death of a father can trigger all kinds of emotions, reflections, and shifts in perspective. In Lilian’s case, however, it registers primarily as an inconvenience—a bureaucratic problem to be dealt with. Lilian (Snejanka Mihaylova), a Bulgarian-born woman, works as a psychologist with dangerous criminals in a U.S. prison. News of her father’s death back in her home country doesn’t arrive as a personal tragedy. Partly because she had virtually no relationship with him and barely knew him at all. And partly because Lilian herself comes across as emotionally distant, almost cold—a kind of human robot who either doesn’t have feelings or refuses to show them.

Once she arrives in her hometown, some things begin to make sense. Not everything, though, because director Kristina Grozeva Petrova is not interested in building a conventional, emotionally driven drama out of Lilian’s life. Instead, the character becomes a trigger for a series of conflicts and subtle shifts. Lilian is undergoing a treatment that includes celibacy. It’s implied that she suffers from some form of sexual addiction and that complete abstinence is the solution she has chosen. Being forced to return home to deal with this family matter, however, complicates both her self-control and the fragile balance she’s trying to maintain.

The rest is more prosaic. Her father died in debt, and she is legally responsible for paying it off. It’s a significant sum. Lilian wants nothing to do with it: she insists she saw her father only once in her life and sees no reason to assume responsibility for his affairs. Still, with the help of an acquaintance, she gets drawn into a maze of bureaucratic procedures and everyday obstacles in an attempt to extricate herself as cleanly as possible. It won’t be easy. And it’s between these two worlds—the intimate and the administrative—that this singular, rigorously controlled film unfolds, from the director of Godless, which won the Golden Leopard at Locarno in 2016.

An austere film led by such a glacial protagonist hardly invites melodrama, and Petrova remains faithful to her chosen aesthetic. Gradually, Lilian begins to edge closer—or return—to death, to sex, to impulses that pull her out of the shadowy stupor that seems to surround her. Not necessarily in a positive way: once her emotions are slightly dislodged, she no longer appears entirely trustworthy. In that sense, her reconnection with certain sexual practices exposes a troubling zone where control, desire, and danger intersect.

Complex, confusing, at times unsettling and at others almost impenetrable, Lust is a film about loneliness, about the fear of confronting one’s own emotions, and about how certain family traits echo and pass from one generation to the next—even when we refuse to recognize them as our own. Lilian wants to remain in control at all times, and when that control slips, something shifts inside her. It may not be immediately visible to the viewer, but for her it means surrendering to unfamiliar sensations.