Suicide Room - Film Review

For his first foray into cinema, writer-director Jan Komasa taps into adolescent plight with everything from social networking obsession to sexual confusion and self harm, right on to virtual escapism and macabre ritual bonding.

In Suicide Room (Sala Samobojcow) we follow young Dominik (Jakub Gierszal), a relatively popular rich kid on the verge of finishing high school, life priveleged and care free. That is, until a traumatic and angst ridden incident with a fellow male student leaves him a social pariah and laughing stock. Experiencing a mini-breakdown, he runs the full gambit of emotions and exiles himself to solitary confinement in his bedroom.

During one of his episodes of despair, he by chance meets a mysterious girl online, an internet addict named Sylwia (Roma Gasiorowska-Zurawska) who introduces him to an avatar based role playing game called the Suicide Room, frequented by disillusioned and dangerously grim minded souls. Through this forum, and via web cam conversations, Dominik forms a strong emotional tie with Sylwia, and also begins to alter his perception of life, becoming more insular and yet more anarchic too, self destruction fuelled by perverse kinship. Meanwhile, Dominik's parents (Agata Kuleszka and Krzysztof Pieczynski) find themselves dealing with the crisis neither is prepared for, as they fail to comprehend their son's downfall.

Komosa, showing audacious confidence for a filmmaker previously only known for TV movies and shorts, here reigns in what sounds like a bleak, modest tale and instead blows it up into a multi-spectral tragedy that in places borders on modern sattire. Not only is Dominik's meltdown extremely visceral, but the seductive power of the suicide room is played out with attentive care, putting us into the mind of the teenage protagonist. The ideals are suitably contradictory, yet played straight, never highlighted as key marks of the confusion and alienation.

While Dominik's harsh, pain ridden journey is of course the film's focus, a healthy amount of attention is paid to the parents subplot. Rather than being cliched, overwrought do gooders, they are self obssessed business first types who cannot get their head around their son's behaviour, so sure that throwing money at him during his whole life is emotionally sufficient. When he falls apart, they don't know how to handle the situation, either by action or words, and act as enablers to their son's rebellion while protecting their own image. Ego and social ladder climbing plays a part in much of the film's characters.

Pretty searing in its delving look into the affluent subcultures of the well off young and older alike, Suicide Room treats the patrons of the titular community with sensitivity and empathy, indulging their attitudes and viewpoints. This is particularly true of Sylwia, an enigmatic and alluring, yet tragic figure hidden in darkness or behind a 3D character, and is played down to a tee by Gasiorowska, a stand out.

Though Dominik is far from a sympathetic lead, who is frankly an asshole before his inward fall, the source of the good will towards him from the audience is purely down to a powerful, utterly commited turn from Jakub Gierszal. He winds his way through the spectrum of emotions, from smug and arrogant smarm to dishevelled, screaming wreck, never once hamming it. Much of his angst and desperation is truly hard to sit through, for all the right reasons.

The spry pacing and momentum Komosa brings is both exciting and engaging, and his story bars no holds. Yet, for all it's downer beats and painful sentiment, Suicide Room doesn't simply tug at heart strings and play it's own visual violin. It's a sad story, undoubtedly, but not a depressing film, which is quite something. And for all it's bordering, it's a pretty simple one too, about growing pains and identity crisis. Something anyone who was once young (which should probably be everyone) should no doubt appreciate.

8/10