"How to Be Normal" in theaters | How can you avoid going crazy?

The question posed by the film "How to Be Normal"—how one can manage to be something that is still considered "normal" in a world in disarray—is one that the film, let's just say, doesn't answer. Rather, it declares it unanswerable.

» How to Be Normal « is the feature film debut of Austrian director Florian Pochlatko and tells the story of a young woman, Pia (Luisa-Céline Gaffron), who, having just been released from a psychiatric hospital, moves back into her parents' bedroom in order to somehow return to, well, normality. This attempt to resume a »normal« life is thwarted, however. No matter what Pia does, everything quickly becomes overwhelming. For her, but also for those around her. The people around her are certainly trying hard and understanding, but for the most part they are in such difficult situations themselves that they are largely unable to help. Ex-boyfriend Joni is overwhelmed by his love for Pia, even though he is the most likely candidate to be her savior and maintains something of a good relationship with her. But this, too, presents Pia with new problems: Joni now has a new girlfriend, so on top of everything else, she's also dealing with heartbreak. Ultimately, the closest thing to her is the 12-year-old neighbor boy with whom she wanders through the woods and who at least shares the strangeness of the world with her, albeit from a child's perspective. Her acquaintance with the boy is the most successful of many subplots, because it is here that it becomes clearest why Pia's attempts to function as part of the world around her fail: her view of this world is a fantastic one. The prepubescent boy is in a similar situation to Pia herself: between the childlike, fantastical worlds of imagination and the dawning adult reality, a balance must be struck between how much of the latter is acceptable for the inexperienced adolescent soul. Children of this age are typically extremely curious about the adult world they must, should, and want to enter soon, but at the same time they refuse to look at those things they do not (or cannot) yet understand, things that frighten or overwhelm them. For adolescents, this is an unavoidable process, in a sense "normal," but for a woman in her mid-twenties, such a state of being trapped in an in-between world is problematic for everyone involved.

The film does not go beyond this certainly correct, but also somewhat trivial, observation when it comes to the inner life and analysis of Pia's madness, and so Pochlatko's visual magic - "How to Be Normal" is teeming with pop cultural allusions - remains little more than an illustration of Pia's incomplete development and her associated mental illness.

In "How to be Normal," we see a world in decline, a world in which "normality" is already dissolving, a world in which, in the face of climate catastrophe, digitalization, and market radicalization, even the sociality of individuals is at stake. None of the characters in the film seem comfortable in their own skin. As the narrator of nature documentaries, Pia's mother has to sensationally announce the apocalypse and no longer understands the world itself. In her father's office, there are not only men in black suits standing around who are supposed to somehow "optimize processes," but the entire printing company in which he holds a leading position is up for sale or has been marked for destruction. In a world without stability, there is no stability left, and especially not for people who are also stuck in a fantasy world.

Pia has internalized her delusional escapism as her only way out and refuses to return to reality, constantly believing she is in a different movie or becoming a TikTok curiosity when she performs a St. Vitus dance at the window of an expensive restaurant.

Given the residual normality that awaits her in adult reality, Pia's escape, as the film suggests, is entirely understandable, almost sensible. But in reality, this "way out" isn't one, because Pia is suffering greatly from the situation.

Thus, the film leaves its audience somewhat perplexed: Pochlatko's film world depicts a collapsing, apocalyptic society that simultaneously strives to somehow maintain its stuffy, bourgeois normality. And how can one not go insane within this madness? (Which might have been a more fitting title.) The depiction of a world still infinitely stubborn in existential decline is perhaps the film's most successful feature, along with Pochlatko's fine knack for crude humor (note in particular the very lovely story of the cat whose fellow patient Pia defecated in the litter box, which saves the animal's life and provides the cat owners with a truly romantic moment). While the world around the protagonists is falling apart, everything in her father's office still has to be printed out and filed, and when, in the face of this completely pointless occupational therapy, Pia asks whether it couldn't be done digitally, she is asked, piqued: "You do know that we're a printing company?"

"How to Be Normal," Austria 2025. Directed and written by Florian Pochlatko. Starring: Luisa-Céline Gaffron, Elke Winkens, Cornelius Obonya, Felix Pöchhacker, David Scheid, and Lion Thomas Tatzber. 102 minutes. Theatrical release: September 11.