Peacock (2025) Movie Drinking Game
Take a Drink: for each new assignment
Take a Drink: when the job bleeds into home life
Take a Drink: for the angry old man
Take a Drink: for ducks
Do a Shot: whenever someone says/implies Matthias isn’t real
By: Henry J. Fromage (Two Beers) –
Countries across the world are settling on their Oscar Best International Film submissions, and this year looks absolutely stacked.
Peacock is Austria’s choice, and follows Matthias, a “rental actor”, which is what it sounds like- a man who can be hired to, say, be a date to a classical concert, or an airplane pilot dad at school professional day, etc. When his wife has had enough and leaves him, though, a slow but steady identity crisis ensues.
A Toast
Young Austrian filmmaker Bernhard Wenger concocts a tongue-in-cheek comedy of awkwardness, of social niceties turned on their head in the face of staid Teutonic implacability and the innate ridiculousness of haute society and avant-garde art. Matthias has been doing this too long and has clearly lost at least some portion of himself in his performances, so much so that his wife gets a Great Dane unannounced just to try and get a rise out of him. He doesn’t feel real to her anymore, and when forced to look in the mirror by her ensuing departure, he’s not so sure himself.
This is a bit of a slow yet droll descent for poor Matthias, who just can’t quite figure out why everything’s going south on him so suddenly. It all culminates in a stunning outpouring of emotion even he doesn’t quite understand himself- a hilarious yet oddly affecting panic attack scene in the middle of the longest damn theater aisle ever.
Beer Two
Like Matthias himself, is this film perhaps a bit too restrained? Often times it stops a short of Matthias’s predicament, and hence the comedy, truly losing control, even in the end when he makes what should be a truly shocking choice himself.
Verdict
Peacock is dry comedy of discomfort and crisis of identity, as an actor for hire starts to lose his grip on just how real his life really is.
