Kill Me Please

There are places all over the world where people's lives are made more pleasant. But somewhere deep in a forest lies a clinic that is all about making clients' voluntary demise as comfortable as possible. The goal of Dr. Kruger's (Aurelien Recoing) team is, of course, to keep people from committing suicide. Who decides however partout for an end of the earthly existence, this is to experience here in as pleasant an atmosphere as possible. A last wish is granted and with the help of medication the patient can decide for himself when he will peacefully fall asleep. What is an act of deep philanthropy for Dr. Kruger, is met with a rather sour response from the people in the immediate vicinity. Again and again, the clinic faces sharp criticism. But now it seems it won't stop at name-calling, as a mysterious killer sets out to take over Dr. Kruger's work. And soon, bloody chaos reigns at the normally quiet clinic, where many a dying man realizes that it might be more pleasant to stay alive after all...

Rendered in drab black-and-white tones, Kill Me Please uses plenty of black humor and quirky characters to tell the story of how society deals with death. Director Olias Barco, fascinated by the phenomenon of mass suicide and having learned that there is an association in Switzerland that offers medically-assisted suicide, wondered what the perfect suicide clinic might look like. In his film, it is a house set in picturesque surroundings where patients can pass away while enjoying a glass of champagne, having their last sexual intercourse with a beautiful young woman, or simply falling asleep in intimate silence. Not every wish can be fulfilled, but the team around Dr. Kruger makes every effort to make the patients' last moments as perfect as possible. Even if for him such people, who at the last moment still decide otherwise, are actually the dearest patients, it fills him with joy that he can still help terminally ill or completely desperate people on their last paths.

With biting irony, Barco asks why, then, people who have nothing whatsoever to do with the suicide candidates, who are neither known nor related, get upset in such a way about such an institution that this anger might even turn into bloody violence. Why is the right to self-determination not accepted? Why is suicide such a taboo subject? The film cleverly illuminates the various facets of the subject, while always keeping it obviously satirical and with a rather wicked sense of humour.

Next to a really amusing basic idea and some very successful moments of deep black humor, which include for example the somewhat awkward suicide attempt of Mr. Damanet (Benoit Poelvoorde, The Anonymous Romantics) right at the beginning, the film unfortunately also has quite a few moments to offer that don't work. Some characters are just too weird and the story descends into too hysterical chaos towards the end, causing initial laughter to soon turn into annoyed eye-rolling. However, in direct comparison, the positives clearly outnumber the negatives. And even if in the end you are left with the feeling that some of the potential of the initial idea was wasted and the good level of the first half is not maintained until the end, Kill me please is still a successful black arthouse comedy that mixes laconic Nordic humor with bitter satire and thus approaches a topic that is still a social taboo today. And that alone makes this work despite its weaknesses then: well worth seeing!

An article by Frankfurt-Tipp