Irene, a theater actress, goes to her house on a lake near Berlin after a long absence. Her older brother Alex and her son Konstantin live there. It is summer and hot. Konstantin is being visited by his friend Agnes, who is spending her summer vacation with her parents in the neighboring house. Transitoriness and farewell are in the air.
Chekhov's "The Seagull" à la Schanelec: here, today, reduced to the essential. People who you could meet in your everyday life, emotional states that you know from personal experience. And some things that always return in Angela Schanelec's films: Berlin, the noisy city. The relation to theater. The reverence for Paris. The camera often looks at people over the shoulder. Or it stubbornly remains fixed on a table with a bowl of cherries. The joy in language, in the manner of speaking. The imperatives press and buck up against great inertia: Don't sleep! Turn it in! Let me go! Love me! Just have a little pity on me! Suffer with me! Please eat something! – But it's all in vain. If the film were not concluded with music by Bach, one might think of a song by the French band Phoenix: "You can't blame it on anybody, some things they don't last."
Birgit Kohler
Production: Nachmittagfilm Angela Schanelec, Berlin; ZDF, Mainz
Screenplay: Angela Schanelec
Cinematographer: Reinhold Vorschneide
Editor: Bettina Böhler
Cast: Jirka Zett, Miriam Horwitz, Angela Schanelec, Fritz Schediwy, Mark Waschke, Agnes Schanelec
Format: 35mm, Color
Running time: 97 minutes
Language: German
