There is an elegiac tone and a dash of wit in this lovely, small-scale film held together by Willem Dafoe‘s magnetic presence and natural but compelling performance. He plays Lucius, the American manager of a grand hotel in Vienna, a job he has taken pride in for two decades and will lose soon when a new owner takes over. “This is the house where I live. And now I find myself forced to abandon it,” he says in voiceover. His sadness is lightened a bit by the oddity of the details he values in that same voiceover. “Hotel Intercontinental Vienna. The first luxury brand hotel in the world and the first one to have telephones in every bathroom.”

As we follow him through several days, he shows himself to be annoyed at the change, unwilling to admit that the hotel’s glory days are over, and finally reconciled to something new, whatever that turns out to be. The Souffleur would be a very different work without Dafoe. He makes the character and the entire film down-to-earth and accessible, two things Gastón Solnicki is not known for.

The Argentinian-born director is known and admired for his artistically daring but often cryptic films, as varied as Papirosen (2011), built from his own family’s trove of home movies, and Kekszakallu (2016), a quasi-documentary about adolescent girls coming of age, which won that year’s FIPRESCI prize for best film in the Horizons section of the Venice Film Festival.  

Even with Dafoe, Solnicki’s approach hasn’t changed all that much. This latest Venice premiere is definitely a work of fragments, isolated scenes that amount to a fly-on-the-wall view of Lucius but are not meant to create a traditional narrative, or for the pieces to fit together as neatly as a jigsaw puzzle.

Weaving in and out of Lucius’ story are black-and-white images of the hotel in the past, from construction to children ice skating outside, to the glamour of a crowded dining room. Much of that footage is archival (the Intercontinental is a real hotel in Vienna, and not dead), some of it enhanced by Solnicki. Those scenes serve to blend the past and present in a way that suits the film’s impressionistic style.

Every now and then some of the hotel’s staff members face the camera and announce their name and room number, for no apparent reason except to let us know they are there and probably about to be displaced. One of those workers is Lilly (Lilly Lindner), Lucius’ daughter, who grew up in the hotel but is far less attached to it than her father and ready to move on. In one scene between her and Lucius, he expresses his concern, looking at her arm and asking if she has been harming herself again. But where a traditional film would lean into the family dynamics, The Souffleur lets those moments sit with us and moves on. At one point we see giraffes. Who knows why?

Although Lucius spends a lot of time walking the halls and checking the hotel’s dining room, he also meets the new owner, Facundo Ordoñez, a rich Argentinian played by Solnicki. Improbably, they have a cordial relationship. And when Ordoñez plays tennis, Solnicki gives him a wiry nervous energy that adds a touch of humor.

There is nothing funny about the film’s jokey title, which is just a strained metaphor. A soufflé rises slowly in the oven at the start, and Lucius and another staff member debate why the chef’s soufflés have been bad lately. The falling soufflé as a symbol of the crumbling hotel is the kind of heavy-handed touch Solnicki rarely indulges.

More often the images are evocative and visually stunning, shot by Rui Poças, the cinematographer who often works with Miguel Gomes, including on the recent, visually arresting Grand Tour. Outdoor scenes especially are artfully composed, such as a distant view of a bridge with the river flowing under it in the foreground, or the glistening look of a puddle on the street at night. Solnicki often likes to keep the camera still, as people walk in and out of the frame.

The Souffleur is a brief hour and 18 minutes long, and just as much a tone poem as it is a character study. Dafoe brings ballast and humanity to it, uniting its fragments as Lucius decides what to do with his future. It’s worth remembering that Dafoe started his career in theater as a member of the avant-garde Wooster Group and understands stories that defy conventional narratives. He is just the person to make this beautifully made little film come to life.