Valerie (2006)

Valerie: Directed by Birgit Möller. With Agata Buzek, Devid Striesow, Birol Ünel, Anne Sarah Hartung. When a photo model gets replaced by a batch of new younger prettier girls, her life of riches melts in front of her eyes and she’s forced to live like a homeless person in a parking lot of a high class hotel she once lived in.

“Like all inspired artists, writer-director Birgit Möller makes us see something we think we know in a new way. Her first full-length feature is a case study of homelessness in a present-day metropolis (yawn!), but seen through the eyes of an out-of-work fashion model (oh?). She had it all and she had it all and then she had some more, as Martin Amis famously put it in u0026quot;Night Trainu0026quot;. But as a twenty-something, Valerie is yesterdayu0026#39;s news in an industry obsessed with youth. A teenage brigade of up-and-coming new faces takes over, and Valerie fast-forwards from riches to rags, finding herself out of work and out of money more or less over night. Her fancy Jag with the yellow lights and French plates is held hostage by the underground parking lot of the luxury hotel she was once a regular at. Birgit Mölleru0026#39;s direction is musingly paced and positively minimalistic. Fine performances by Agata Buzek, one of Europeu0026#39;s most graceful on-screen smokers, as Valerie and Devid Striesow as her knight in not-so-shining armor. Too bad Birol Ünelu0026#39;s part, a photographer you canu0026#39;t help liking despite his exploitative behavior, is so small.”