Existing in the kind of corporate shark tank that has its own bravado slang for pulling a 48-hour shift takes a particular kind of ruthlessness. Excelling in that world, as Lola (Valerie Pachner) does, takes the kind of control and drive that leaves no margin for error, no leeway for any hint of weakness or failure. Which is why Lola guards the fact that her sister, Conny, has been institutionalised yet again for paranoid schizophrenia, suspecting correctly that Conny’s frailty will taint her own reputation in the eyes of her bosses.
But while the chalk and cheese sisters initially seem worlds apart, this tightly focused psychological drama suggests, as Lola starts to lose faith in her own mental strength, that Conny’s hospital and Lola’s sterile conference rooms are not so very different after all. This oppressive, atmospheric Austrian drama takes the kind of alpha female high achiever familiar from Maren Ade’s Toni Erdmann, but undermines her with splinters of Hitchcockian paranoia.
• The Ground Beneath My Feet is streaming on all major digital platforms
