Life is too long

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Movie
Original title Life is too long
Life is too long (Austrian premiere 2010.09.01) Meret Becker, Markus Hering.jpg
Country of production Germany
original language German
Publishing year 2010
length 86 minutes
Age rating FSK 12
Rod
Director Dani Levy
script Dani Levy
production Manuela Stehr
music Niki Reiser
camera Carl-Friedrich Koschnick
cut Elena Bromund
occupation

Life is Too Long is a German film by Swiss director Dani Levy from 2010.

action

The Jewish filmmaker Alfi Seliger, 52, calls himself “Nebbich”, the Yiddish term for a failure. He is in a life and creative crisis: his wife Helena, who as a voice actress largely provides for the family's livelihood, feels neglected and cheats with her director Johannes; his children Romy and Alain are in puberty and despise their father; his eccentric mother, a former movie star, annoys him with constant phone calls and melodramatic appearances. In addition, there is a professional dry spell: his last success, the comedy The Blue Wonder , was a few years ago, and since then he has not been able to realize a film idea. He goes from party to party to meet movie people and sell them his script about the cartoon controversy. Working title: Mo-ha-hammed . Seliger is tired of making light comedies and wants to devote himself to a serious subject with humor. His efforts are fruitless, however, until he meets Natasha, the loving Russian wife of the influential film producer Miesbach-Boronowski: She treats both her husband and Alfi with a woman's guns and gets the producer to sign a contract with Seliger; she openly calls for the female lead.

In order to raise money for his project, Seliger, against his conviction, takes a well-paid job as an episode director for a soap opera . When he made too high demands on the actors, he was fired. At the same time he stumbles from one mess to the next, breaks his leg and hand, has to undergo a gastroscopy and colonoscopy at Professor Mohr's and learns that he has cancer (which, however, is cured by surgery). Finally, he is ripped off by Miesbach-Boronowski: Seliger had overlooked the fine print in the contract and has to experience how his script for an RTL series is messed up around a cartoonist. Everything seems to have conspired against him, on top of that he loses almost all of his fortune due to an incompetent investment advisor. Only the soap star Caro, the lover of the aging film star Georg Maria Stahl, understands Seliger and his needs: During a night rendezvous in a brine bath , the two get closer - platonically . It is also Caro who is the only Alfis to share the sudden realization: He, she and all other people around them are only roles in a film.

From this point on, the plot turns into the surreal: Seliger disconnects himself from the script , goes in search of his director and scriptwriter, confronts him and makes him responsible for his fate. When the situation for Alfi and his state of mind worsened and reality, dream and fiction threatened to blur, he tried to kill himself with the help of tons of sleeping pills, sedatives, alcohol and cleaning agents: his therapist Tabatabei had him as a advised last resort; But even that fails: After days in a coma , he wakes up in Professor Mohr's clinic and is reconciled with his wife at the bedside. After an appearance at the Venice Film Festival - whether dreamed or real, it remains unclear - as a celebrated successful director, there is a memorable family reunion: his mother confesses that she was once Miesbach-Boronowski's lover and Alfi is his son. After further turbulent and confusing entanglements, Alfi finds himself in bed with his wife.

  • Dani Levy (Austrian premiere, Vienna)

  • Yvonne Catterfeld and Markus Hering (Austrian premiere, Vienna)

  • Yvonne Catterfeld, Meret Becker, Dani Levy and Markus Hering (Austrian premiere, Vienna)

Reviews

The reviews of the film are mostly cautious to negative. DIE ZEIT calls the film “amusing and strenuous at the same time” and above all praises the performance of Markus Hering: “Without Hering, everything would be just slapstick.” Spiegel Online attests to the director's tendency to “joke around at his own expense” and “endlessly Larmoyanz "and draws the conclusion:" Just as at the beginning he quickly loses his directorial sovereignty in the scenes about the film industry, which are frighteningly weak in speed and timing, so in the end he gets tangled up in his meditation on reality and film reality. "Also the Süddeutsche Zeitung makes “an unbelievable amount of noise”, says Dani Levy “as a filmmaker a mimosa” and criticizes Markus Hering's performance as a “ Woody Allen cut”. Further: “As far as the insights into the film and television business are concerned, the film looks pretty retro.” The Jüdische Allgemeine criticizes that Markus Hering's “impressive” acting performance is “unfortunately everything you can think of between comedy and drama can be attributed to iridescent strips. ”The initially“ light-footed tragic comedy in the style of Woody Allen ”develops“ soon into a lead-heavy navel-gazing ”. Levy violates "the first commandment of every artist: You shouldn't bore your audience."

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Certificate of Release for Life is Too Long . Voluntary self-regulation of the film industry , August 2010 (PDF; test number: 123 253 K).
  2. ↑ Thomas E. Schmidt in ZEIT , published on August 26, 2010, accessed on September 2, 2010
  3. ↑ Christian Buß : tragic comedy "Life is too long": Shell jokes at your own expense , Spiegel Online , published on August 27, 2010, accessed on September 2, 2010
  4. ^ Fritz Göttler in the Süddeutsche Zeitung , published on August 26, 2010, accessed on September 3, 2010
  5. ↑ Phillip Engel in the Jüdischen Allgemeine , published on August 26, 200, accessed on September 3, 2010

Web links

Commons : Life is Too Long  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files