Blood Sisters (2014)

Movie
German title	The dead woman in the mountain hut
Original title	Blood sisters
Country of production	Austria
original language	German
Publishing year	2014
length	87 minutes
Rod
Director	Thomas Roth
script	Agnes Pluch
production	Peter Wirthensohn , ; Tommy Pridnig
music	Lothar Scherpe
camera	Jo Molitoris
cut	Birgit Gasser
occupation
	Nicolette Krebitz : Rita Kastner; Franziska Weisz : Sonja; Edita Malovčić : Manu; Silke Bodenbender : Charly; Nora von Waldstätten : Ingrid; Harald Krassnitzer : Rita's father; Christopher Schärf : Max; Raimund Wallisch : Max's father; Michael Fuith : Type 1; Christoph Schlag : Type 2; Gerhard Liebmann : Type 3; Pia Rotter: Rita as a child; Theresa Weber: Sonja as a child; Fanny Fuhs: Manu as a child; Lola Dietrich: Charly as a child; Anna v. Zierotin: Ingrid as a child; Leo Plankensteiner: young Max;

Blutsschwestern is an Austrian television thriller that was first broadcast on ORF 1 on April 1, 2014 . The co-producing German broadcaster ZDF chose the title Die Tote in der Berghütte for its first broadcast on May 5, 2014 .

action

Arrival and history

After three years, Charly arrives by train from Hamburg at Graz Central Station , where she wants to meet her friend Max. She knows Max from her childhood in Styria and met him again by chance in Hamburg. But she is also expected by her friends Rita, Sonja and Ingrid in Graz . Thereupon the decisive and selfish Rita suggests that a celebration be held in the family's hunting lodge in Upper Styria . A fifth friend, Manu, is also invited, but cannot be reached. The women are not at all impressed by Rita's plan, because the five of them had such a weekend when they were children, but it ended in a catastrophe: While playing with a hunting rifle, Rita fired a shot into the forest. Max's father was hit and lost an eye and the ability to speak. Rita's father hushed up the accident and invented a poacher who shot. As a result, however, he took care of the man and Max, whom he treated like his own son and for whom he financed his studies. Ingrid also studied at Rita's father's expense and then worked for the family company for years. As of now, no one has learned the truth about the incident. Charly is still concerned with the memory of this event today.

Since Rita has already organized everything with Ingrid's help, they agree on an overnight stay in the house and drive off with Max. On the way to Upper Styria, they stop at a rest station. Then the tipsy Rita sits behind the wheel, protesting the others. On the mountain road to the destination, she pushes a blue sports car with three men off the lane, but just drives on. Shortly afterwards they reach Max's parents' house, where the key to the hut is to be picked up. There Max says that he is considering moving to Hamburg. Because of the previous history, Charly is extremely uncomfortable when he takes her to see his father, who covers his disfigured face with sunglasses. Then Max takes the women to a cable car where the path to the hunting lodge begins. This property is very remote and can only be reached on foot or by cable car. On the way there, Charly sees the blue car again.

Main action in the hunting lodge

When they arrive at the hut, the women run to a pond to bathe. Ingrid Rita hides very aggressively several times. Charly goes back to the hut alone and has the feeling that she is being watched. Manu also takes the cable car to the hut. She suffers from a serious illness (not mentioned), is on strong medication and has recently lived in India. The two are attacked by the three men (in the script: "three guys") from the blue car who are trying to rape them. Rita, who suddenly arrives, is able to drive her away with a rifle, because Aissa, the shepherd dog from Max's father, is not much help and flees into the forest. Rita can persuade the frightened to stay, because the police cannot be contacted due to the lack of cell phone reception. Eating together on the terrace leads to an argument with the tipsy Rita, as she announces that she is getting engaged to Max. Charly can't believe all of this. She wants to leave the meeting, but a storm approaches and prevents her departure. Everyone except Rita, who wants to bathe, is busy bringing the objects to safety on the terrace. Then the power goes out and the cable car starts moving. The killed dog is sent to the house in the gondola. Apparently he had been killed by the three men. This causes panic, and the women flee into the house. There Rita lies dead in the bathroom, shot with the hunting rifle that Charly wanted to take with her for protection on the way down to the valley. It is strange that the gun is back in the locked gun cabinet, but the key is gone. While some of the women see links to the past and even consider Max as a possible avenger, others accuse each other of having committed the murder. After Rita had previously offended everyone, each would have a reason for the murder.

The lesbian Ingrid had just been fired by Rita, although she had sacrificed herself for the company for years - out of love for Rita. According to Rita, she only became something because Rita's father encouraged her.
A few years ago, Rita took Manu's boyfriend off when she lost her hair due to her illness. As a result, Manu fell into a deep crisis. Because of this, she "fled" to India, where she worked in a death clinic.
Back then, Charly was the one who betrayed Rita with a single look. Then there is the argument about Max, in which she made the statement: "I want to go, otherwise I'll kill you!"
Rita also indicated to Sonja that she had already had every man she wanted, that she should “have no illusions about that”. However, Sonja is the only one who does not feel guilty about covering up the accident.

So you decide to wait for the morning together in the living room. The depressed Manu goes to sleep in one of the upstairs rooms. The next morning, Sonja and Charly suddenly begin to point the blame on each other. Charly runs out of the argument into the forest - Ingrid and Sonja follow her. When they come back to the hut, Manu, suffering from cancer, is lying lifeless on the floor and Max has come as agreed to pick up the women. In a suicide note, Manu declares that she cannot live with her guilt.

At Rita's funeral, Sonja confesses to Charly that she shot Rita after she admitted that she had seduced her husband Christoph as well. Her son Felix suffers from a bacterial infection that will make him blind within a year. Sonja immediately concluded that the sexually transmitted disease could only have been brought onto Sonja's family by Rita through this affair. When confronted with this, she merely meant that she would be examined in order not to have “such a child”.

dramaturgy

The plot, which is shown from Charly's point of view, is interrupted by flashbacks in which Charly's memories are shown, through which the prehistory is revealed. These scenes are played by young girls. Tension is built up by the cargo cable car, which can be steered from the mountain as well as from the valley. The decisive murder scene, which is only shown at the end, is covered during the action by distraction scenes with simultaneous actions by Max and his father. In these scenes the record player is currently playing I'm Sorry by Brenda Lee - also interrupted by a power failure. Before that, Rita always says, when there is no other way, "I'm sorry."

Novel

The screenplay was written by Nora Miedler , based on motifs from the novel Waiting for Poirot , which is also written in first-person form from Charly's point of view. The situation of the five women on the cut-off mountain hut and their names were adopted, only Marnie became Manu, Marc became Max. However, the novel is set in winter during a snowstorm and Marc is Rita's brother there, who has an incestuous relationship with her . Rita is stabbed and Marnie, suffering from cancer, dies of pills. In the novel, too, Sonja only turns out to be a murderer in the epilogue, after Ingrid had both murders attached. The motif is more plausible, however; Sonja has an illegitimate child without her husband knowing about it and is blackmailed by Rita.

production

The film, a co-production by Lotus-Film GmbH with ORF and ZDF, was shot from May 27 to June 27, 2013 in Graz , Krieglach and St. Martin im Sulmtal . The mountain hut is near Alpl . Although it rained for four weeks of the five weeks of shooting, the fire brigade had to help out for five nights for the rainy scenes. There were problems during the shooting because there is actually no cell phone reception at the location.

The title chosen by ZDF was out of the question for ORF film director Heinrich Mis because it was too reminiscent of a Florian Silbereisen film.

reception

Audience ratings

When it was first broadcast on April 1, 2014 on ORF, the film had 426,000 viewers according to Teletest , which corresponds to a market share of 16 percent.

The German first broadcast on ZDF on May 5, 2014 had 5.12 million viewers. With a market share of 16.8 percent, this was the most successful show of the evening.

Reviews

Birgit Baumann wrote in the Standard on April 2, 2014 that the search for clues was “at the expense of those film minutes that could have made it clearer why Rita is such a disgusting beast, but that others still cannot avoid her. But the five women - as different as they are - have one thing in common: They play their roles very well, above all Nicolette Krebitz as the horrible Rita. "

Julian Miller in the quota meter describes the first part as boring and repetitive, only the second half is exciting until the end. If the film had concentrated more on the thriller genre than on melodrama , the film as a genre film could have been taken seriously.

In the Berliner Zeitung , Björn Wirth describes the film as a “thriller, only without a thrill”, which works with “standard suspense”. He also calls the ZDF title “misleading” because there are two dead.

Medical consideration

Bacterial diseases (caused by gonococci , chlamydia , etc.) are common worldwide and responsible for more than 6 million blind people, but almost only in developing countries. Infections are not so rare in Europe either, and transmission during childbirth through contact between the eyes and the blood in the birth canal is a reality. It is also possible that sick pregnant women may have premature births or blood poisoning in the unborn child . Such a disease of the mother would, however, be easy to determine and treat in Austria by means of the mother-child pass examination or after the birth. With an antibiotic at an early stage, healing without permanent damage is the rule. In no case do you have to sit and watch as a child “goes completely blind”. The deliberate disinformation and non-treatment of a parent mentioned in the film would also be counterproductive, since the child could fall ill again and again through smear infection .

Web links

Blood Sisters in the Internet Movie Database (English)
The dead in the mountain hut at Kino.de
"Blood Sisters": Thriller by Thomas Roth on April 1st on ORF eins , ORF customer service

Individual evidence

↑ Murder puzzle of five girlfriends , Oe24 on March 12, 2014

↑ In some articles, the name is given as Marc as in the novel , even in the official ORF broadcast ( Memento of the original from April 7, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. . @1@ 2

↑ Thriller “Die Tote in der Berghütte” ( Memento of the original from April 7, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , Style one magazine @1@ 2

↑ Die Tote in der Berghütte (Fig. 3/7), program information ZDF

↑ There were only four left ... ( Memento of the original from April 8, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , Argument + ariadne @1@ 2