The Audition review – music teacher drama plays more than a few bum notes

There are shades of Damien Chazelle’s Whiplash in this German-French tale of an obsessive violin instructor pushing a student to breaking point whilst also collapsing themselves, but in focusing in on the inner life of the tutor, Ina Weisse’s The Audition ends up hamstringing itself. With an entirely unsympathetic lead and an often muddled and uninvolving story, The Audition never comes close to capturing the electric, kinetic thrills of Chazelle’s superlative jazz-drumming drama and spending 100-odd minutes in Weisse’s world quite quickly becomes a chore.

This instructor is Anna Bronsky (Nina Hoss), a former virtuoso violinist herself who now teaches at a prestigious music school in Berlin and takes an intense interest in young player Alexander (Ilja Monti), even as her fellow instructors are left cold by his initial audition. Anna promises them that Alexander will be concert-ready by the end of her six-month program and swiftly becomes lost down the rabbit hole of obsession whilst pursuing this goal.

Meanwhile, Anna is also cheating on her French woodworker husband Philippe (Simon Abkarian) with celebrated cellist Christian (Jens Albinus) and her already distant relationship with her young son Jonas becomes even colder, to the point where the pair start to actively detest each other. The stage should be set for juicy psychological drama, but in practice The Audition ends up stretching itself too thin – there’s also a whole subplot about Anna’s possibly abusive aging father – so that none of the elements get the room they need to actually connect.

The result is what feels like a series of vignettes revolving around a character you have absolutely no reason to care for. Of course, there’s no need to have a lead be likeable to tell a compelling story, but when a character doesn’t really run any deeper than their myriad damning flaws, it’s hard to invest in anything that happens to them. Hoss wrings a decent performance out of the role, but it’s still not quite enough to compel, whilst the rest of the cast are simply blank slates, bringing no extra life to thinly-written roles. Monti (a genuine violin prodigy but not an actor) in particular struggles in front of the camera – his playing is of course impressive, but you never get the necessary clash of wills between him and Hoss to really sell Anna’s fixation.

It all builds to a ludicrous ending that, while admittedly providing an interesting new context with which to view the preceding events, stretches credulity and even hits some unintentionally funny notes. This is a frustratingly uneven film, its inability to find an anchoring throughline outside of Hoss herself eventually just becoming boring.

Along with Whiplash, the obsessive musical tuition sub-genre has also brought us searing classics like The Piano Teacher, and The Audition feels like a poor imitation of its stablemates, lacking both their rich character work and directorial verve. It’s a film as cold and unavailable as its characters, who mostly seem bored of each other by the time the credits start rolling. It’s a feeling you’ll share.

The Audition is now showing in UK cinemas.