A title like How to Be Normal and the Oddness of the Other World (Florian Pochlatko, 2025) is a statement in and of itself. The type of title that no one will remember properly or say out loud casually, it’s the kind of thing that filmmakers pick to show that they are literary, different, clever. Why settle for something simple like, I don’t know, Madness!, when you can go all out on a long and enigmatic title like How to Be Normal and the Oddness and the Other World?
Or why stick to an aspect ratio when you can move between 4:3, 1:85:1, 2:39:1 and 1:66:1 all in the same film? Or why stick to one or two themes and develop them carefully when you can slip and slide into random concepts without exploring anything meaningfully at all? In fact, why make a coherent film when you can make the Austrian How to Be Normal and the Oddness and the Other World instead?
In Pochlatko’s chaotic, deeply unenjoyable debut, concerning the trials and tribulations of Pia (Luisa-Céline Gaffron), recently released from a mental institution, anything goes. And nothing works. This looseness in style isn’t an invitation for Everything, Everything All at Once-style (The Daniels, 2022) maximalism — somehow holding our interest despite the kitchen-sink approach. Instead, this exceptionally flabby film meanders between ideas — and characters! — without ever showing us what matters and why.
Our hero Pia has generalised anxiety disorder, alongside a variety of other mental illnesses. As she tells us through near-constant voiceover, “In a world of boundless possibilities, I have chosen to be sick.” As she begins to renavigate the world around her alongside her parents Elfie (Elke Winkens) and Klaus (Cornelius Obonya), How to Be Normal initially promises to be a concerned and heartfelt look at mental illness, yet it isn’t very long before the whole thing quickly falls apart.
Slamming together corporate satire, a weird Ed Sheeran-lookalike and an even weirder relationship with a young boy — while also hinting at (yet never truly developing) a monster-transformation narrative — How to Be Normal is several genres melded into one, promising nothing yet somehow failing to deliver on even the slimmest of its ideas.
The whole thing has no flow. A mental breakdown might be followed by a banal office scene, a tense family moment followed by our protagonist looking at her phone. The aspect ratio changes are also at random, with absolutely no thematic continuity. Edited with the feel of a home insurance advert, How to Be Normal aims for broad appeal and heartrousing moments, but constantly falls flat due to its inability to settle into a consistent and satisfying rhythm. What’s truly remarkable is how this film starts off being simply bad before slowly — yet surely! — gravitating towards the realm of total unwatchability. This is a spectacularly misjudged movie. In the end, it’s just like its title: long, random, ungainly and annoying.
Redmond is the editor-in-chief of Journey Into Cinema.