I’ve never one hundred percent "gotten" art film. Sure, I can appreciate a good artistic vision and a tightly woven message laced with symbolism, but most of the time it’s simply lost on me. I would like to think I’m of moderate intelligence, but more often than not, I’d rather kick back with a cold one and one of Jason Voorhees’ murder extravaganzas than with my thinking cap firmly planted on my giant head for a celluloid allegory. Simple minds seek simple pleasures, as the old saying goes.

However sometimes one of these "artsy" films can hit home with yours truly, as is the case with Marcus Stiglegger’s Schwester Mein (Sister Mine), a peculiar psychosexual film noir that manages to do quite a bit in its brief 17 minutes on the screen. While not quite clear, the plot involves a young man seeking answers to the disappearance and death of his sister Alina, whose corpse he keeps at home in a pretty slinky get-up. His quest for the truth leads him from his sister’s old apartment to a kinky BDSM club, all the while being observed by a silent stalker in a porcelain mask.

At least that’s the general gist I got. Again, the film is more symbolic than an A-to-B linear narrative, so the plot is secondary to visual stimulus and metaphor. As far as stimuli, this film’s got that part down pat. It’s deliberately paced (almost slow), with plodding shots of our protagonist skulking about the city dragging us into bleakness and despair before punching us square in the jaw with the candlewax-dripping, ass-smacking, nipple-tweaking debauchery of the club, undercut with a shrieking industrial score that’s more technological death-knells than actual music. At times, it seems like it’s trying way too hard to be deep and meaningful, but it’s still quite enjoyable.

The DVD-R also includes several other short films, presumably by Stiglegger as well, all dealing with predatory themes in a much more blatant way than Schwester Mein does. "Traumspiel," from what I could glean, was the interplay between a vampire and his hunter. "Opfer" was a quasi-giallo (black-gloved knife killer, ahoy!) exploring the cat-and-mouse relationship between the killer and his victim, but roles can be reversed in the bat of an eye, it seems. "Male (Medea)" is a roving shot of a battered woman on wobbly legs limping beneath an overpass (which inexplicably warrants a trailer on the disc), and "New York 1989" seemed simply to be grainy 8MM footage of NYC (circa 1989, one would assume) set to a techno soundtrack. They’re certainly not for every taste ("New York 1989" bored the hell out of me), but they offer a decent amount of extra meat for the disc.

As far as picture quality goes, it varies. The main feature was shot on DV, and looks fairly clean. Edges were sharp, although the blacks were a little soft and the colors were rather muddy in the club scene. Audio wasn’t much to write home about, although it’s nearly a moot point as dialogue is limited to two lines, and the music was scratchy and abrasive by design. The bonus films fared the same, from sleazy grindhouse 8MM to squeaky-clean DV. Extras included the aforementioned bonus films, an extended (and much more explicit) performance of the club scene by "Die Kleine Gruftschlampe" (The Little Gothic Slut to us English-speakers), a full-length commentary in German, and a trailer. Again, why trailers are necessary for 10-to-20 minute films is a logic that I will never understand. Hell, I may never understand Schwester Mein as a whole. However, I’ll have a pretty decent time trying.