Frankreich, wir kommen!

"The whole thing hasn't even started yet and I'm already completely finished," says Austrian sports journalist Johann Skocek, even before the kick-off for the 1998 World Cup has taken place. "A drama in three acts" is the subtitle of Michael Glawogger's captivating documentary France, here we come! in the subtitle, and the relatively short World Cup appearance of the Austrian national team (heavy spoiler: after the preliminary round matches against Cameroon, Chile and Italy, they went straight home again) is accompanied by Skocek's shrewd analyses, while Glawogger describes the football fever from the perspective of a few hand-picked fans, such as a bank auditor who attends around 100 matches a year with his mother, a pensioner with a penchant for alcoholism who recounts the course of events at his father's grave after every match and - most movingly and most characteristic of the Glawogger approach - a blind man who nevertheless doesn't seem to miss a single detail of the game. Cuts to the fan reactions in other countries during the live broadcasts, spanning continents, reveal gigantic differences in mentality. As a declaration of love for football, France, here we come! is unrivalled, but by no means uncritical. With laconic humour, it also reveals a typically Austrian attitude that still draws hope in the face of despair. Creedence Clearwater Re-vival play "As Long As I Can See the Light". (Christoph Huber)

Photo: Austrian Film Museum