19 films are in competition for the Golden Bear at the Berlinale. An awaited film with American stars was presented this weekend: “Manodrome”, by South African John Trengove. A psychological thriller that tackles the issue of toxic masculinity head-on.
How to be a man when traditional representations of virility are challenged? This theme, the South African director John Trengove has been working on it since his first feature film, Insiders, on a story of taboo homosexuality during an initiation ritual. He continues this exploration with manodromea film shot in the United States with American stars Adrian Brody and Jesse Eisenberg.
Jesse Einsenberg plays Ralphie, a young Uber driver in full questioning: he is going to be a father, sculpts his body in a gym and is fascinated and troubled by bodybuilders. This lost young man will be introduced into a community of men led by a kind of guru who encourages them to reaffirm their masculinity.
The vulnerability of modern men, toxic masculinity, is one of the themes of this 73rd Berlinale, frontal in manodromebut also present in other films in the competition: Blackberry, which takes place in an almost exclusively male tech environment, disco boy which follows a member of the Foreign Legion, or the Chinese film The Shadowless Tower.