‘Mr K’: Busan Review

Dir/scr: Tallulah H Schwab. Netherlands, Belgium. 2024. 96mins

If there’s one thing that’s direct about this labyrinthine existentialist mindbender from Norway-born, Amsterdam-based filmmaker Tallulah H Schwab, it’s the title – a clear reference to Franz Kafka and the writer’s frustrated protagonist from his final novel The Castle. In terms of exuberant absurdity, however, the film has at least as much in common with the work of Samuel Beckett. That’s thanks to its darkly comic air and Mr. K himself (Crispin Glover) who, after checking into a hotel and discovering he can never leave, finds his sense of self being stripped away.

Schwab balances the humour, surrealism and a sense of threat

It is a radical departure from Schwab’s previous film, coming-of-age drama Confetti Harvest. But – as with last year’s Charlie Kaufman-tinged Mother, Couch! from Niclas Larsson – the gravity of the ensemble cast amidst all the surrealness helps. That should stand the film in good stead as it plays in Busan’s Flash Forward strand after bowing in Toronto’s Platform. It has already sold in several territories and wider audiences are likely to fall in love with its endless invention, arresting visuals and the compelling central performance from Glover as his character tries to hold it together amid the chaos.

Chaos is not something that Mr. K is used to. A magician by trade, he is briefly seen performing on stage, controlling his own little universe of tiny spinning planets. He checks into a hotel in an unnamed place that, from the outside, is being slowly colonised by moss and plants. It’s also the first indication of the intricately detailed production design from Manolito Glas and Maarten Piersma that will make this curious establishment feel every bit as alive as its strange inhabitants.

Upon entering his room, Mr K. finds a man under the bed and a maid in the wardrobe, but it’s when he tries to leave the next morning that things really become surreal. Unable to locate the stairs, Mr. K is soon encountering the other residents, including a raucous troupe of musicians who spring from a secret door and a pair of elegant, and curiously alike, sisters (Irish veterans Fionnula Flanagan and Dearbhla Molloy, twinkling like stars). Both they and a woman named Gaga (Swiss actor Sunnyi Melles), who is presiding over a luxurious banquet elsewhere, also evoke Alice’s Adventures In Wonderland – Mr. K is told, “You must try the rabbit”. 

This is a warren of a place, where Mr. K will soon lose his suitcases and even his original clothes, but where he also happens upon an ally – a cook named Anton (Norwegian actor Jan Gunnar Roise), who lives in Escher-like staff quarters and works in a kitchen that revolves solely around egg preparation. Schwab extravagantly ladles on the absurdity even as she begins to thread in more existentialist concerns. Mr. K is a self-declared “nobody” but, as he works on an elaborate scheme to map the hotel’s hallways and realises that the walls may be literally closing in, he finds many of the residents suddenly view him as a mythical ’liberator’. While others may be happy working within a system that threatens to crush them, Mr. K’s attempts to break out are met with a set of entirely new problems. 

Schwab balances the humour, surrealism and a sense of threat in a fashion that fans of Jean-Pierre Jeunet, Marc Caro and David Lynch will enjoy, but which still retains its own distinctive personality. Glover brings a sense of loneliness to Mr. K that makes us care about him but, while he is a sort of innocent abroad, he’s just unpredictable enough to suggest he could become dangerous in the right circumstances. All the while, composer Stijn Cole matches the capricious energy with his sometimes boisterous, sometimes soulful and often skittering score.

Schwab’s ambition extends to further mood shifts in the final act which, despite being radically different from what has come before, she navigates with an admirable amount of smoothness. Perhaps not a film for those who look for neat plots and easy answers, here the questions spin like planets – but, as one character puts it, “The trick is to recognise what’s important”.