A film by Emily Atef
With Marlene Burow, Felix Kramer, Cedric Eich, Silke Bodenbender, Florian Panzner
In the summer of 1990, Maria and Johannes create a refuge in the attic of a farm on the border that is no more. The future seems clear until Maria meets Henner and loves him in a sensual, raw and merciless way. A surprising dose of German romanticism.
Our Review: ***
Emily Atef continues here her exploration of the afflictions, sensations and desires of the female soul, after Three Days in Quiberon and More than Ever. She admits that the subject imposed itself on her because it spoke to her, questioned her, like Romy Schneider or the character of Vicky Krieps in More Than Ever. As a child, the director identified with Mowglie, but was surprised that the cinema did not offer her more heroines. She is more interested in her opposite, or more precisely in the women she could be if she had several lives, than in trying to slip in her own personal experiences. But through the camera and the staging, she necessarily slips in many clues about her own sensibility. Thus, the question of desire, of emancipation towards a future that cannot be said with certainty to be better, that of love as well, or of the relationship to the image in a given societal context, inhabit her three films which could thus form a trilogy. Emily Atef succeeds once again in questioning the spectator, notably her look at the psychology of women in resistance with the doubts that their minds go through, who come to make resolutions after reflection. The emotion is never far away. However, here, the delicate treatment, the attention taken so that an eroticism “women gaze” can emerge, but also the intention to narrate a period of transition between a world before and after, impose a particular rhythm to the film. Some lengthy passages may thus tarnish our overall impression, which is otherwise favorable.
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