Sleeping with a Tiger

A painting. Green with conifers, the earthy tones of dry meadows and church walls. In the light streaming through her grandmother’s farmhouse, where Maria Lassnig spends her childhood, shines a cardigan in sky blue for the first time, shining as if not of this world. Growing up in southern Austria, Lassnig is drawn, via Vienna’s Art Academy, into the local post-war art scene. Sky blue, pink, jade green, fleshy red. Taciturn, stubborn among men who like to hear themselves speak, she feels her way into her own body and takes a look at the world. She paints. She films. Mercilessly and mischievously. Doggedly, she develops her career. She knows the value of her painting long before the art world follows suit with its verdict. Birgit Minichmayr embodies Maria Lassnig in Anja Salomonowitz’s filmic homage to the artist across all stages of her life and psychological states, fleshing out the “body awareness” of Lassnig’s art with a physical body that produces the art. An offbeat and complex biopic in hybrid form: acted scenes and documentary sequences interlock. The images are real. (Berlinale)