The young woman is staring straight into the camera, insistent and motionless. She withstands the gaze of the viewer, even more: She looks into the viewer’s conscience. You see her face in close-up, then she says: “Next time I’ll punch you in the face”. It is a liberating moment of revenge, of purification, of anger, which erupts in front of the camera after half an hour in the documentary “The Case You”. And an act of self-empowerment.
Young actress Aileen Lakatos, who previously revealed how she was the victim of sexual assault during a film audition, reclaims her agency as she recounts the incident. What happened to Aileen parallels the experience of many other actresses. Sexual abuse on film sets and the famous cast couch are still hot topics that have been gaining public attention lately thanks to the #MeeToo movement.
In her emotionally disturbing debut documentary, director Alison Kuhn, born in 1995, brings together five young actresses who all took part in the aforementioned casting. Kuhn himself was also an applicant for this audition in 2015, in which the director, the production and the fellow actors repeatedly crossed borders. Now, years later, she wants to work through that on film. In the sheltered space of the Babelsberg Film University theater and in front of Kuhn’s camera, the women review their traumatic experiences, compare them with each other and try to find a way of dealing with what they have experienced.
The perpetrator wants to use the material – and continue the abuse
Those affected report psychological manipulation, forced nude scenes through to sexual and violent assaults during the casting. The stories told by the young women provide shocking insights into perfidious abuse strategies in the film and culture industry, in which positions of power are shamelessly exploited in the name of art. Kuhn dissects this structural abuse of power very forcefully and always on an equal footing with the actresses.
In many cases, the worst thing for the young women is the shame that remains. About yourself. Not following your own intuition, letting yourself be pushed into something you didn’t really want to do. With minimalist means, the director focuses on the actresses in the black rehearsal room and makes herself an accomplice. Neither music nor editing are used manipulatively, which gives the film tremendous precision and the protagonists a clear voice.
Since the casting director continued the abuse by assembling his own film from the casting material shot, there is currently a legal dispute between the production company and the actresses. “The Case You” is a great emancipatory hit, also in the way it was made: Reflective and extremely sensitive, Kuhn manages to put past abuse in the right picture with her camera: In a self-determined, female gaze regime. Aileen’s threat can also be seen as an end to the silence – and as the beginning of resistance.
The Case You – One case of many, D 2020 – Direction and script: Alison Kuhn. Camera: Lenn Lambster. Music: Kuhn, Dascha Dauenhauer. With Isabelle Bertges, Gabriela Burkhardt, Aileen Lakatos, Lisa Marie Stoiber, Milena Straube. Mind Jazz Pictures, 80 minutes. Theatrical release: March 10, 2022.