An ice-cold satire on the world of the super-rich

I came, I saw, I conquered – the quote from Julius Caesar as the title of the film aptly summarizes Amon Maynard’s life. Maynard (Laurence Rupp) is the King Midas of investors. Everything he tackles – whether it’s taking over a company or building the largest battery factory in Europe in the middle of a green meadow in a nature reserve – succeeds.

His instinct for the future and high risk tolerance also make him a favorite political partner. A caste in “Veni Vidi Vici” that is rather under-resourced and whose ignorance is as great as their unscrupulousness.

The boyish Maynard is also a family man. He is devoted to his wife Viktoria (Ursina Lardi), even though her reproductive abilities are looking rather poor at times.

At every opportunity, Maynard romps around the palace, which is decorated with a few designer pieces of furniture, with the small, exquisite multi-ethnic adopted daughters Coco and Bella. The eldest, polo champ Paula, who acts as the voice-over narrator in “Veni Vidi Vici”, is shaped into the successor in a loving, laissez-faire manner. Also on the rifle.

Hunting is Maynard’s great passion. The ones on people, mind you. Assisted by butler Alfred, he transforms them into the shapes of cyclists, lovers or joggers in the forest. He becomes increasingly desperate and amazed that, despite the obviousness of his actions, no one holds him accountable for them.

That’s exactly the point that the Austrian directing duo Daniel Hoesl and Julia Niemann make in their bitter satire. The privileged are the untouchable. You are above the law. They are more powerful than politics. You only have to look at figures like Musk, Trump, Bezos or Zuckerberg to find this ironic exaggeration shockingly plausible.

Amoral neglect of wealth

“Veni Vidi Vici” was produced by Ulrich Seidl, the grand master of observing and depicting anti-social decadence in bourgeois garb, whom Hoesl previously assisted. With films such as the investment banking satire “WinWin” and “Davos”, a documentary about the World Economic Forum, Daniel Hoesl and Julia Niemann have established themselves in the cinematic treatment of the world of money.

Unlike Ruben Östlund’s grotesque “Triangle of Sadness” (2022), which relies on luxury visual values ​​and disgust effects, and David Schalko’s eccentric billionaire morality picture “Old Money” (2015), “Veni Vidi Vici” feels twenty degrees cooler.

The Maynard family’s amoral neglect of wealth is wrapped up in the innocent lamb’s white of the clothes, the walls, and the Porsche. And in phrases like “Honestly lasts longest” and “After all, performance has to be worth it,” which lawyer Viktoria and student Paula recite with innocent expressions. Bloody cynicism pure as snow.

If it weren’t for the dead, one could almost believe the family idyll, which is mostly staged hyper-realistically in distant long shots (camera: Gerald Kerkletz), to be real. But even if “Family is everything” is Amon Maynard’s credo, one quickly suspects that in this sociopathic world of perverted individualists it is possible to fall from grace at any time.

After all, the children experience a maximum of educational tolerance. “Shoplifting? That’s undignified, try harder, Paula,” Viktoria reprimands the teenage daughter who was caught by the police and who was stealing from a store with her rich kid clique. The migrant shop owner, who quickly withdraws his complaint, is quickly compensated.

Paula learns quickly when her butler and armorer Alfred shows her how to assemble a rifle in the in-house firearms room. Alfred used to be a journalist, she says in a voiceover. Like Volker Carlotta, who has long recognized Maynard as the shooter. It’s just that no one is interested in his research. The lawless space that law-and-order politicians always talk about when it comes to street crime exists in the investment world of the super-rich, for whom there are no rules whatsoever.

The fact that “Veni Vidi Vici” is declared to be a call to stop their activities only works to a limited extent. Even if Daniel Hoesl and Julie Niemann dissect the empathy-free nature of their protagonists with a sharp scalpel, that doesn’t change the fact that the lifestyle of billionaires is more fascinating than the life of a normal earner. It may also be morally reprehensible and acquired through criminal methods. A life as king of the capitalist food chain is always more sexy than being at the bottom of it.

Nevertheless, “Veni Vidi Vici” skillfully and skillfully manages to create a maximum level of unease – which can be translated into reality – about the lethargy of politics, the police, the press and the plebs.

“Who will stop me?” is the quote that prefaces the satire. Well, who? Amon Maynard would be well advised to keep a close eye on dear Paula.