The Best Laid Floor Plans: ‘The Tenderness of Wolves’ and Space

A murderer’s house should feel like one.

Based on the same real-life horrors as Fritz Lang’s M, 1973’s The Tenderness of Wolves, directed by Ulli Lommel, constricts its protagonist to a tight, uncomfortably shot apartment. Full of strange angles, interesting camera movements, and other cinematic techniques used to emphasize the apartment’s dimensions, Lommel’s film explores space like some explore psychology.

Not that The Tenderness of Wolves avoids psychology. Its focus on spatial relationships correlates to those relationships between predator and prey, murderer and victim. The slanted angles and extremely precise framings all say something as specific as an accusation.

Essayists Cristina Álvarez López and Adrian Martin break down this entire apartment’s layout through a meticulous real estate video that covers all the various ways in which Lommel uses his setting to build meaning in his film.

Jacob Oller: Jacob Oller writes everywhere (Vanity Fair, The Guardian, Playboy, FSR, Paste, etc.) about everything that matters (film, TV, video games, memes, life).