A Montreal woman (Mary Margaret O’Hara) journeys to Vienna to watch over a comatose cousin and, left to her own devices in a foreign city, strikes up a friendship with an elderly guard (Bobby Sommer) at the Kunsthistorisches Museum. Their friendship plays out largely in the museum galleries, against canvases by Rembrandt and Bruegel, and a lengthy monologue about the latter, delivered by a docent at the midpoint of this 2013 drama, underlines how deeply writer-director Jem Cohen (Benjamin Smoke) has internalized Breugel’s fascination with seemingly trivial but sharply idiosyncratic characters. The two leads contribute fresh, genuine performances, and what might have been a musty academic exercise gains in tension from Cohen’s deft juxtaposing of vocal narration, character detail, and majestic artwork. In English and subtitled German.
Museum Hours
1 hour 47 min • 2013
