Verdict
Summary
Recommended, if a little off the radar and off tempo for a mass-market sensibility.
Visual Vengeance brings Laurin to a fully loaded Blu-ray: This release ups their game by going classy rather than their typically junky and rough fare they handle. One would expect Radiance or Deaf Crocodile to release something such as this, but they’ve given it a royal treatment (#30 on the spine), with a poster, tons of bonus content, a beautiful transfer from 35mm film elements, stickers, and more. This might be their best release to date.
Plot:
A woman whose father is away for months is left orphaned in a small village when her mother is found killed, leaving her vulnerable to a killer that is living nearby.
Review:
In a small rural village in Germany at the turn of the century, a beautiful girl named Laurin (Dora Szinetar) lives a carefree life with her beautiful mother in a big home where her grandmother also lives sleepily glued to her rocking chair. Laurin’s father shows up every few months from his seafaring voyages as a soldier, and his latest visit is brief, as he’s called away again, to be absent for at least another six months. While he’s away, Laurin’s mother is found dead in a bizarre way: She was hung upside down in the nearby lake and drowned. Was it an accident … or was it some kind of murder? There isn’t much of an investigation, but clues to the disappearances of local children – including a Gypsy boy who vanished one night – might indicate that there’s a killer living in the village somewhere, and Laurin who is precocious and snoopy with her copious free time and unsupervised days, begins to suspect that she is in great danger. Her grandmother isn’t going to help her much, and the local priest who buried her mother sees her as a nuisance, but the only person who shows her any attention is her male (single) schoolteacher who has begun courting a local woman who has a son … who soon goes missing.
A hauntingly strange and eerie but vividly filmed coming of age spooky story from German filmmaker Robert Sigl, Laurin reminded me a little bit of Vincent Ward’s coming of age classic Vigil or Philip Ridley’s The Reflecting Skin, another highly unusual coming of age film with horror undertones. Fans of those films should seek this one out, and it constantly keeps you uncomfortable and unsettled with its young protagonist’s innocence constantly at risk. A more modern type of this sort of thing can be found in the incredible supernatural coming of age movie The Lady in White. Recommended, if a little off the radar and off tempo for a mass-market sensibility.
Visual Vengeance brings Laurin to a fully loaded Blu-ray: This release ups their game by going classy rather than their typically junky and rough fare they handle. One would expect Radiance or Deaf Crocodile to release something such as this, but they’ve given it a royal treatment (#30 on the spine), with a poster, tons of bonus content, a beautiful transfer from 35mm film elements, stickers, and more. This might be their best release to date.
Bonus Materials
- Director-approved 2K HD transfer from the original 35mm film elements, complete and uncut, in both English- and German-language versions
- Feature-length audio commentary by film historian Troy Howarth, author of Innocence Lost: Robert Sigl and the Curse of Laurin
- Updated subtitle translations for the German version assisted by Robert Sigl
- Original VHS rough cut of Laurin from Sigl’s private collection, featuring set-recorded audio allowing viewers to hear the actors’ real voices prior to overdubbing
- Laurin c’est moi: New Interview with Director Robert Sigl.
- Two award-winning short films by Robert Sigl: The Christmas Tree (Der Weihnachtsbaum, 1983, 20 min.) and Coronoia 21: It Comes with the Snow (2021, 10 min.)
- The Making of Laurin archival documentary
- Interview with actress Dóra Szinetár
- Interview with actor Barnabás Tóth
- Interview with cinematographer Nyika Jancsó
- Film historian Jonathan Rigby Interview
- Optional German language audio track
- Robert Sigl Bavarian Film Awards Presentation
- 8 photo galleries featuring never-before-seen images from Robert Sigl’s personal archives.
- Collectible folded mini-poster.
- Blu-ray sleeve featuring original home video art.
- 6-page liner notes essay by Tony Strauss of Weng’s Chop magazine – FIRST PRESSING ONLY
- Limited Edition mini-postcard set reproduced from German promotional materials – FIRST PRESSING ONLY
- ‘Stick your own’ VHS sticker sheet – FIRST PRESSING ONLY
- Optional English Language Closed Captions
- Limited Edition O-CARD by Justin Coons – FIRST PRESSING ONLY
- Original Trailer
- Visual Vengeance Trailers
