Wow, this is a REALLY bad movie!

Memorable, crazy movie

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

I enjoyed watching this film and would recommend other to give it a try , (as I am) but this movie, although enjoyable to watch due to the better than average acting fails to add anything new to its storyline that is all too familiar to these types of movies.

There is comedy and tragedy, and I enjoyed it. There are beautiful women, and the men are true enough to real life. Cynicism is the theme. Coincidence is the necessary gimmick for tying the three soapers. It is a deep portrayal of modern folkways and mores. Because I as an American had to read subtitles, I missed many nuances. Deceit is certainly omnipresent. Human beings are imperfect, because nothing that I know is without a downside.It's a jungle out here.Human wrecks and car wrecks aren't rare.If you are happy, you ought not fool with cynically minded reviewers a la me, but thanks.It has been an awful 2016, and our new president will soon take power--rots of ruck.. This film is not happy ever after.This film isn't consoling nor redemptive.This film captures some of the absurdity of life, and that's why I like European portrayals of reality.This film is not warm and fuzzy nor phony, and does deserve the recognition it achieved.I am sure it bothers folks because it is so harsh.Unfortunately life is not a fairy tale.Warning, Hollywood corniness it ain't.They want ten lines, so I have to be redundant, and such finagling is about our reality too.

The interlocking sexual relationships here find their unifying metaphor in a minor incident shown in long shot, without emphasis. A man trains his dog to fetch, to heel, to leap up and wrestle for a stick. The man's relationship with his dog replays the issues of control in the three human stories. But the human relationships are all complicated by the power of sexuality. That's why — as the old man with a mysterious disease remarks — people make fools of themselves.The nurse's husband finds his passion in classical music. So she's ripe for a wild affair with a traveling salesman, where they experiment with blindfolding, exhibitionism and an increasingly daring pleasure. Both lovers are overwhelmed by heir sexual connection; they hardly speak. The lover's pleasure in his erotic photos of her contrasts to her husband's walls of classical CDs. They are symptomatically different collectors. His control threatened, the husband erupts when her ostensible night duty interrupts their planned concert, then when a real estate agent stands them up. Their young teen daughter has her own music, to which she practices sultry dancing, exploring her approaching womanhood. The young blonde cashier exercises a different power, faking pregnancy to win her Yugoslavian boyfriend's commitment to marry her. Her fits of anger and jealousy appear to bring him to heel. In fact, he walks her dog as a way to meet his more amenable mistress. But the girl is more damaged and controlled by her moods than her fiancé is, even if he does return after her suicide attempt. His mistress is herself struggling to remain free from her violent, obsessive ex. Swaggering, boastful, pleading love and claiming superior understanding, the real estate agent forces himself on her and punches out his rival. Mercifully, he kills himself in the traffic accident that pulls the separate stories together. He's destroyed by his delusions of manly power, as the blonde is by her manipulative moods that damage her more than her guy. Only the nurse succeeds because — as a healer — she has found what she needs to live fully and follows her prescription. Like her dancing daughter, the nurse uses her sexuality to fulfil herself. The stories are set in an ugly dense housing complex in Vienna. All the stories of animal vitality and the struggle for control play against that dehumanizing setting. Indeed the classical music fan wants to move out, perturbed by the genital graffiti on the elevator walls. His wife finds at least an emotional escape. The violence in all three stories is limned in the title, which suggests the anti-Ares, the opposition to the god of war, the passion of sex and love, which can be as destructive yet more fulfilling. Beats having an obedient dog.

Gotz Spielmann is a true auteur. His film-making style is instantly recognizable, weaving a spell. What's going on in front of the camera can be merely someone shutting a door, a couple having explicit sex, a violent car crash, two people having an argument, but that camera is not moving. This makes you highly aware of everything in the frame and everything is there for a reason. You notice colors, especially white, black and red. Virtually no music, except some smoky sax over the credits. His constant use of medium shots remind you that you are not "there," you are just an observer.The movie portrays a highly contrived, but nevertheless convincing, story on the theme of sexual betrayal. Three couples who live in the same apartment building (but do not know each other) are introduced and their stories are told, one at a time. We meet a very reserved nurse and mother who is having a passionate affair behind her husband's back. Then, a supermarket checkout clerk, not emotionally stable, who has falsely told her Yugoslavian boyfriend that she is pregnant in hopes of hanging on to him. Finally, a divorced woman dealing with a racist and thuggish ex-husband who won't let go.As the movie progresses, odd events get explained. Once, a couple walking in the courtyard hear a woman scream. Later in the movie we see the scene of the screaming woman.The movie generates an enormous amount of suspense as it unfolds. Will the nurse confess to her husband? Will the checkout clerk come clean about her false pregnancy? Will the divorced woman be seriously harmed by her increasingly erratic ex-husband? As the last question, it is answered in a harrowing psychological confrontation that will have you on the edge of your seat. What people are eating and where they eat it also seems to matter.It leave it to others to explain the meaning of the roses in a vase, the dog trainer, the hooker on the corner and other apparent signifiers in the film.If you liked this, be sure to check out Spielmann's "Revanche," which is even better.

Antares gets its name from the ancient Greeks and means Anti-Ares. Ares is, of course, the God of War, also called Mars by the Romans. Antares is linked to the planet Mars because they are both about the same colour and brightness, so it is easy to get them confused. The official site tells us, "The film comprises three interconnected stories that are in a sense three 'Scorpio stories' with intense emotions, both positive and negative: sex, jealousy, violence, crisis and death." If you bear that in mind, it will give you a clue to the substance of this finely observed film, but the movie hooked me before I knew that, making fine comparisons that easily confound moral judgement.Antares begins with a car crash (one that takes us quite unawares) and continues an intense pace for the first third of the movie, including explicit sex scenes. But the first story is that of Eva, a nurse, wife and mother. She becomes involved in an intensely passionate affair. The second story concerns a check-out girl, obsessively jealous of her partner who pastes billboards for a living, and lying to him to ensure his 'love'. The final story concerns a divorced couple where the man will not let go and the wife has started seeing someone else. The three stories fully intertwine only at the end.Each story involves a couple and a third party, none are 'whiter than white'. But there are important differences, not least in how we view and judge them. Using 'truth' as a yardstick gets us nowhere as none of them are particularly honest – although the most violent person (the abusive husband of the last story) is probably the least dishonest. In the first couple (a white collar family, listening to Schubert, raising a teenage daughter with love and care), we somehow feel that the infidelity is less 'wrong' than in the later example. It might even be the safety valve, without which the couple (who communicate politely but not very effectively) would have reached breaking point, hurting everyone but especially the child. In the second example, both partners are trying to control the other and we instinctively feel they are more selfish and less sympathetic. A yardstick becomes, who is hurt? What was the intention to hurt or nurture? Their motives to each other seem shallower, their methods more devious, they are less likable. They are also less interesting – given that this film will appeal to a highbrow audience, do we judge them worse because they are poor and less intelligent? But then we see the third scenario – a brutal, dangerous husband. Can the wife be blamed that she has 'moved on'? the husband is externally convincing, but we learn he has raped and beaten her and she is in fear of him. His 'reality' is a different one to hers. Compared to the billboard-poster, who seemed such a reprobate a minute ago, he is a monster.Notice how our perceptions and judgements of the characters are altered as well by the use of nudity in different ways, by the use of humour (a person seems less 'bad' when they are funny, irrespective of the facts), and by our comparisons with 'better' and 'worse' individuals. Trying to make moral judgements becomes a very confusing affair, but most people will be able to distinguish between the non-violent and almost loving deception of the first couple compared to the violent triangle of the last story. The effective attempt to 'do the right thing' in spite of overriding passions manifests itself differently.If you found movies like Closer intriguing as a moral primer, take Antares on for a more difficult conundrum. It takes someone of considerable skill to weave such a tapestry effectively, and Götz Spielmann distinguishes himself in Antares as a director of profound insight, considerable talent and great artistic integrity.