Backstage: A Gripping Drama On The Tug-of-War Between Authority & Subordination

Émile V. Schlesser’s Backstage is a masterclass. A powerful narrative of an exploitative system, gender-reversed power dynamics, a gritting pull between age versus experience, Backstage, offers so many subtexts, that it warrants multiple views. Very few films explore these subject matters in feature-length, let alone in the short duration category. And, yet, Schlesser not only ingeniously crafts a dark and compelling tale around stardom, systemic manipulation, and the grey that exists between power and hunger, that by the end of the near 26:00-minute-long film, one is left with the uncomfortable, unsettling comeuppance that feels well deserved but not earned. It makes one ponder about the façade behind the grandeur, the cost that an artist pays to merit the limelight. 

Lukas (Jonathan Joél Albrecht) is the lead, cast opposite Vero (Jil Devresse), in a two-person play directed by the famed theatre director Cosima Lambrecht’s (Sascha Ley). That the star of her previous play Philippe Delacroix (Tommy Schlesser) went on to become a sensation soon thereafter only sets the premise clear of any ambiguity. This is a woman who holds the strings to make or break one’s career. Brilliant, but cold, skilled, but highly manipulative Cosima has everything going in her favour. The woman whose experience could very easily launch the next star vehicle; she is predatorial, demanding and intensely self assured. 

Ley is mesmerising to watch. There’s a chilling, lackadaisical approach in her demeanour that drops hints of her past. The studied glances, the calculated smiles, the brush of her hand that instantly metamorphosis into a wand that determines Lukas’s fate is a masterclass in itself. Lukas, on the other hand, played by an equally talented Albrecht matches up to Ley’s fierce persona. An antidote to her powerplay, he is warm, unsure and vulnerable, which becomes the playground for Cosima to set the rules. The frenzied pull between the two is an outpouring of having a very talented cast and crew. The colour palette, a sharp, visual imagery of who holds the reins, along with Thorsten Robert Harms’s cinematography, throws us around the green room and the wings, swaying between the heady spaces of the centre stage and claustrophobic hotel rooms.

The grey space that Schlesser creates in Backstage is hypnotic as it is revolting. The fight between submission and helpless surrender, mentorship and rehearsed manipulation, all melt into a frightening world of moral ambiguity, toxic workspace and systemic abuse. Rickie Lee Kroell’s composition becomes another masterful stroke to Schlesser’s editing that matches to its pace in order to create a stifling world of isolation and despair.

Co-written by Jonas Brand & Émile V. Schlesser, Backstage is an important film, both for its craft and subject matter. A topic often misunderstood, and underrepresented, the film, along with its cast in entirely present a narrative that flips all conventional notions of power and abuse into creating a real-world scenario that is as honest as it is uncomfortable to watch.

Brilliant! Highly recommended!

Watch Backstage Short Film Trailer