The melancholy girl

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Movie
Original title The melancholy girl
Country of production Germany
original language German
Publishing year 2019
length 80 minutes
Age rating FSK 12
Rod
Director Susanne Heinrich
script Susanne Heinrich
production Philippe Bober,
Till Gerstenberger,
Susanne Heinrich,
Jana Kreissl
music Mathias Bloech ,
Moritz Sembritzki
camera Agnesh Pakozdi
cut Susanne Heinrich,
Benjamin Mirguet
occupation

The melancholy girl is the debut film by the German writer and director Susanne Heinrich . The unconventional “discourse comedy” was awarded the Max Ophüls Prize in 2019 and was then shown at numerous other festivals, both national and international. The cinema release in Germany was on June 27, 2019.

content

In 14 relatively short, loosely connected episodes, framed by pro and epilogue , the film portrays a young woman with no name, origin or home who is looking for a place to sleep in an anonymous city, probably Berlin, every day. She usually finds shelter with men of different ages and backgrounds, but apparently nowhere stays longer than one night. When asked about what she did, she says she is a writer with writer's block; it does not go beyond the first sentence of the second chapter. Nevertheless, it has not left her speechless. Cool and distant in habit and tone, she repeatedly makes judgments about herself, her counterpart and neoliberal society. She also expresses some things several times, such as: "I am unhappy so that people like you can be happy."

theme

So now we're all happy was the title of Heinrich's second novel from 2009. So she has been following the topic for a long time. The “happiness concepts” that society offers a young woman are “thoroughly worked through” in the film: offspring, art, entertainment, modeling, yoga, psychotherapy, drug addiction, sex ... The nameless, melancholy girl lets her on again approach, but not really care; she has already got to know them, discarded them all, and now approaches them with ironic distance: "I hope I never have a child out of boredom."

“ Melancholy ” as a diagnosis of their “demonstrative indifference” is also an ironic understatement. In the course of the film she calls her illness, very contemporary and direct, depression . In Larmoyanz they forfeit it for a moment, analyzes them but even their depression as a "structural" and "political." Heinrich's criticism of neoliberalism , which teaches people to see themselves as individuals and no longer think in terms of structures, confirms this, as does the judgment by the jury of the Max Ophüls Prize : “A young woman becomes the symptom of a society that is hers Promise of happiness not kept. "

shape

Already in the prologue it becomes clear to the viewer that neither catchy narrative cinema nor identification potential awaits him. It may sound like a serious crisis when the melancholy girl asks herself: “How did I become all that I never wanted to be?” But the tone of voice reveals: It touches her, doesn't really move her (anymore?). Almost bored, she seems to be talking to herself until it turns out that there is an addressee in the room: a naked man on the bed. He seems more natural than her, more lively, “more sympathetic”, but also a bit ordinary and naive; inferior to it in any case, both figuratively and figuratively.

The scenery, in which the protagonist remains almost motionless, is "unnaturally bright and flatly lit" so that it almost merges with the background, which itself has no depth - it is a photo wallpaper. On the whole it looks like looking at a picture. The almost square film format reinforces this impression. Even moving to another room hardly changes that. The interior is stylized, highly artificial; the dominant colors are the pastel tones pink and light blue; the camera is often static, just like the actors, especially the melancholy girl. Specifically instructed by the director to gradually shed their moving “liveliness”, this meant “unlearning” what they had learned in the drama school and being reminded of it again and again at the start of shooting (whoever looks closely, says Heinrich, can begin with almost everyone Scene hear her admonishing "and please").

The director is therefore not concerned with “listening to reality or depicting it”, but with “exemplary situations that make something visible” - for the viewer. He should be able to distance himself, “go for a walk in this film thinking and feeling” - and not let himself be “hypnotized” by the action, led to a passive attitude. Brecht and his alienation effect were the inspiration here. Heinrich admits to this as well as to the influence of Laura Mulvey , whose feminist film theory has shown that classic Hollywood cinema is shaped by the male view of the female body. She wants to reverse this view in the Melancholy Girl , not just in the prologue.

When asked whether there are visual or narrative models for the humor in her film, Heinrich denies it and adds that it was “relatively hard-earned”. For a long time she had been looking for a sense of humor that goes beyond stale old man's jokes, one that is “full and rich” and at the same time aims at “consent and disagreement”. An important reference person on the way there was Vanessa Stern , who worked on the Berlin Sophiensælen shows about female crises. Nevertheless, the humor of the script was only gradually transformed "layer by layer" into that of the film. As a result, she finds The Melancholy Girl "screamingly funny".

criticism

"The debut film, trained in post-Brechtian political cinema, is a theory-saturated, extremely shrewd border crosser between pop and politics, which counteracts the pathologies of a neoliberal world with the means of post-dramatic theater."

- Film service

Awards and nominations

Film Festival Max Ophüls Prize 2019

First Steps 2019

  • Nomination in the full-length feature film category (Susanne Heinrich)
  • Nomination for the Michael Ballhaus Prize for Camera Graduates (Agnesh Pakozdi)

The melancholy girl was also in the preselection for the German Film Award 2020 , but was not taken into account when the regular nominations were announced.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Certificate of Release for The Melancholy Girl . Voluntary self-regulation of the film industry (PDF). Template: FSK / maintenance / type not set and Par. 1 longer than 4 characters
  2. ↑ a b The melancholy girl. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed February 22, 2020 .Template: LdiF / Maintenance / Access used 
  3. ↑ a b Andreas Busche: Neoliberal in pastel shades. Der Tagesspiegel , June 29, 2019, accessed on July 6, 2019 .
  4. ↑ Bert Rebhandl : I am my own war. Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung , June 29, 2019, accessed on July 7, 2019 .
  5. ↑ a b c Susanne Heinrich : Susanne Heinrich shows her favorite scene. Spiegel online , June 26, 2019, accessed July 7, 2019 .
  6. ↑ a b Hannah Pilarczyk: Something new is beginning in German cinema in pink and turquoise. Spiegel online , June 26, 2019, accessed July 7, 2019 .
  7. ↑ a b c Susanne Burg: There is not much left of the ideal of love. Susanne Heinrich in conversation with Susanne Burg. Deutschlandfunk Kultur , June 22, 2019, accessed on July 8, 2019 .
  8. ↑ preselection . In: deutscher-filmpreis.de (accessed on January 24, 2020).