Michael Thomas in Rimini. Photo: Ulrich Seidl Filmproduktion

RIMINI
Directed by Ulrich Seidl
Certificate: 15
☆☆☆☆☆

STUMBLING through the day, Richie Bravo is a giant hulking bear-man, smelling of stale booze and fags, with an underlying whiff of urine and sweat. He can barely be bothered to get dressed to leave his basement digs, walk along the out-of-season promenade in the Italian resort of Rimini, and reach his place of work.

But by the time he arrives in the empty hotel bar, a mask has been created: this is, after all, the famous Bravo, Austrian night club crooner extraordinaire, whose career is sustained by a niche set of female fans for whom Richie, with his mane of hair and sunbed tan, represents a glitzy and youthful past.

We first see Bravo (Michael Thomas) as he returns to his family home to meet his brother (George Frederich). They collect their father from a nursing home, and head off to bury their mother.

From this introduction, we are taken on a funny yet uncomfortable journey, falling out of one monumental booze-up into a lounge crooner’s get-up, entertaining his ageing fans, and then getting sloshed again.

The pay cheques aren’t large, but the appetite for beer and fags is. Bravo sleeps with his loyal followers for cash, and is long past shame.

When his estranged daughter (Tessa Gottlicher) appears demanding money – Bravo has failed to pay her mother – he hatches an unsavoury plan to raise ready cash, mend his ways, rebuild their relationship and gain an unlikely redemption.

Rimini looks terrific. The lead is perfect. This is a character born to wear horrible clothes badly, and it is no surprise to learn Bravo was written specifically for Thomas. The costume department has played a blinder.

Seidl uses long shots to set up backdrops symmetrically, creating a set piece study of landscape. It has the feel of still photography, an exhibition of a haunted out-of-season resort, and is a reason why the narrative pace doesn’t matter.

Bravo, who crashes through all this like a sozzled bulldozer, has a Charles Bukowski vibe mixed with Mickey Rourke’s The Wrestler and when the stage mask slips it reveals a lost soul bordering on a miserable, drunk misogynist.

Bravo is a great anti-hero, an intriguing, grotesque character, repellent and fascinating.

A spin-off series of his misadventures would provide plenty of material for black comedy. Director Seidl has announced this is the first of a trio of films, the second to focus on Bravo’s brother. This crooner deserves an encore.