Dark Satellites (2022)
Directed by Thomas Stuber
Dark Satellites consists of three individual stories, all of which are told from the perspective of a main character finding some reprieve from their loneliness with another person.
The first two are about a security guard falling for a young Ukrainian refugee and a diner owner yearning for his neighbor, a married Muslim woman. Both of the female characters are extremely infantilized. They talk in broken sentences, giggle like children, stomp their feet or shake their head when they can’t express themselves with their limited vocabulary. They don’t have any agency or motives of their own, only serving to aid their male counterparts in their search for intimacy, love or understanding. Which leads to uncomfortable power dynamics and, frankly, exploitation disguised as romance.
The third story is about two middle-aged women falling in love and is the least offensive of the three. There is still a stark contrast between the male and the female, making use of the tired butch and femme lesbian cliché, but at least the femme is allowed to behave like an adult, though still maintaining a toddler-like speech pattern. Their story is as close to a mutual happy ending as can be, but still falls flat.
The eponymous satellites refer to the periphery: cleaners, security guards, people behind the counter, refugees. But we unfortunately look at them from the perspective of an intellectual well to do director (and it shows). The movie revels in destitution, taking place in perpetual dusk and night, in depressing highrises and refugee camps, where people menacingly mumble in foreign languages. The atmosphere is depressing and foreboding, as it shows the main characters emerging from barely lit streets and empty train stations.
Although the director sets out to show that there is companionship in the unlikeliest of places (and by “unlikeliest” he means the poors), he fails. The masculine and the feminine are delineated so clearly and starkly that there can never be compassion between the two. Both remain alone, maintaining only the illusion of togetherness, as one serves the needs of the other without any mutual respect or understanding.