The items of love
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| Original title | The items of love |
| Country of production | Germany |
| original language | German |
| Publishing year | 2019 |
| length | 97 minutes |
| Age rating | FSK 0 |
| Rod | |
| Director | Miriam Bliese |
| script | Miriam Bliese |
| production |
Clemens Köstlin , Miriam Bliese, Andreas Louis (DFFB) |
| camera | Markus Koob |
| cut | Dietmar Kraus |
| occupation | |
| |
The Individual Parts of Love is a German feature film. The feature film debut of the director Miriam Bliese , who also wrote the screenplay, premiered on February 12, 2019 as part of the 69th Berlinale in the section Perspektive Deutsches Kino . The German theatrical release followed on August 22, 2019. The main roles were cast with Birte Schnöink and Ole Lagerpusch .
As a mixture of serious separation drama and laconic patchwork comedy, Die Einzelteile der Liebe traces the stages of a couple over a period of six years: from falling in love to the failure of the relationship - and dealing with their child after the separation. However, the film does not tell its story in chronological order, but jumps back and forth between different time levels several times. Scenes from the past are set in summer, while the present takes place in winter. Almost all the scenes take place in front of the same apartment block in Berlin's Hansaviertel .
action
In contrast to the structure of the film, this description of the action is chronological.
Scenes in summer
Georg, a budding architect and part-time musician, meets heavily pregnant Sophie when she has to go to hospital for delivery. The father of their child is Georg's former band colleague Richy, who does not show up for the birth. Instead, Georg steps in for Richy and picks up Sophie at home; the two get a little closer. But after the birth of Jakob, Georg lets time pass before he visits Sophie again because he is unsure about her relationship with Richy. When he finally dares to see her, Sophie tells him that Richy now lives in Scotland - and he could stay there. It indicates that Georg and Sophie fell in love with each other the first time they met.
A few months later, Georg and Sophie are a couple. Sophie works in sales for a music label and Georg tries to boost his architecture career. At the end of the breastfeeding period, treat yourself to a small party with a few friends outside their apartment block. When little Jakob screams through the baby monitor at night, they notice that they have locked themselves out. While everyone is waiting for the locksmith, Jakob keeps shouting until Georg manages to calm him down by singing an old man.
Three years after getting to know each other, the couple has arrived in the stressful everyday life. Sophie fills the majority of the family budget with her unloved job, while Georg is still waiting for his breakthrough as an architect. He also wants a second, biological child and is disappointed when a pregnancy test turns out negative - while Sophie seems rather relieved. After Jacob's baptism, she offers Georg to adopt Jacob. At first he reacts angrily, because he perceives this as a distraction from his own desire for a child, but then lets himself into it.
Another two years later: Georg explains to Jakob what an adoption is while he is building a garden sofa out of wooden pallets as a birthday present for Sophie. Since he will be in Rotterdam on her birthday to apply for an architecture contract, he entrusts Jakob with the task of handing the gift to Sophie. On the morning of his departure, Sophie would like to lure him to bed again quickly, but Georg only has Rotterdam on his mind. When he comes back she seems distant. Finally, after a night's drive, she confesses to him that in his absence she slept with a graphic designer from her company. The next day, Sophie tries to smooth things over again: She decorates the garden sofa with pillows and trees, together with the reluctant Georg - and insists that the affair meant nothing to her. But the increasingly helpless attempt at reconciliation fails; it breaks.
Scenes in winter
After the separation, Georg would like to continue to be there for Jakob as a father, but because of the hurt feelings, a mud fight breaks out between him and Sophie. Georg is convinced that Sophie wants to prevent him from contacting Jakob with all sorts of flimsy excuses. On a spontaneous occasion, he simply takes Jakob with him when Sophie is in the shower. She can only run after the car angrily and in vain. At the next meeting, Sophie accuses Georg of kidnapping Jakob. Although he rejects this, he also refuses to bring Jakob back to her soon. Instead, he lives with Jakob in his makeshift office after the separation.
Sophie hires a lawyer - against the advice of Fred, her new boyfriend. He's a lawyer himself, but a criminal defense attorney, not a divorce lawyer, as he emphasizes. It happens as Fred suspected: The situation escalates even more, because Georg also defends himself with sharp legal means. Meanwhile, Jakob tries in his childlike way to bring the quarreling parents closer to each other again: He hands Fred an old cell phone from Georg, which Fred should pass on to Sophie. Her cell phone is probably broken, says Jacob, because Georg said that he "can no longer talk to her".
Fred then takes the initiative himself and arranges to meet Georg in front of the house, supposedly to hand over a cuddly toy for Jakob. Georg confesses to Fred that Jakob wants to go home again. The two men negotiate a deal: Georg brings Jakob back; In return, it is set out in writing when and how often he can see him.
The arrangement seems to work at first; Jakob even manages to revive an old family ritual for a brief moment: Singing hits together. However, parents quickly fall back into their patterns of argument and distrust.
When Georg shows up late to pick up Jakob one Saturday, Sophie replies annoyed that the child is already with him. Georg thinks this is a trick at first, but then both have to realize that Jakob must have left the house on his own. They desperately look for him and argue about who is more to blame for the situation. Georg notifies the police and after further separate searches, the two parents, meanwhile more thoughtful, are back in front of the house. When the police finally call to say that Jakob has been found unharmed, there is great relief. While Sophie and Georg wait for Jakob shivering in the cold wind, old feelings gradually arise. They begin to kiss passionately - until they are interrupted by Jacob's police escort.
epilogue
Three months later, Georg and Jakob return from a trip; Sophie picks you up at Tegel Airport. Fred is waiting in the car and they all drive back to town together. It becomes clear: Sophie and Georg have not become a couple again, but the contours of a kind of patchwork solution are emerging. While the car is driving, the taunts fly back and forth between the adults until Georg turns on the radio and gets stuck with a hit: When will it be really summer again? Georg and Sophie begin to sing along with the song - to Fred's displeasure, but to Jacob's delight.
production
Location and script
Almost all of the scenes in the film take place outside a residential building in the southern Hansaviertel in Berlin-Tiergarten ; several times the scene is even the same outer door. Only two scenes in the hallway of Sophie and Georg's apartment, a couple of car journeys and an epilogue at Tegel Airport break this pattern. She built these exceptions, says Miriam Bliese , because: “A dogma becomes boring if you don't break it.” In addition, she wanted to allow her protagonists at least briefly the intimacy of the interior.
Miriam Bliese derived the design idea with the uniform location from her short film An der Tür (2013), which runs for five minutes in front of an outside door . The characters Georg and Sophie are also based on this short film: A father picks up his son from his former partner and talks to her via the intercom while waiting.
The individual parts of love were filmed on the listed row building by the French architect Pierre Vago in Klopstockstrasse. 14–18 , which was created in the course of Interbau 1957. The distinctive column structure on the ground floor of the building is a recurring image element in the film, as is the covered ramp that leads to the entrance door. In reality this is just a back door; however, the film team redesigned the rear of the building to the front for the duration of the shooting.
The director on choosing the location:
“I was looking for a building that had something archetypal about it; a clarity that emphasizes the characters and their actions and does not let them get lost in the local color. In the 50s architecture of the Hansaviertel I found the sober clarity that I was looking for, but also a restrained form of beauty. The post-war modernity of the Interbau'57 architecture has a very gentle effect on me, despite the size and still astonishing modernity of the buildings. The architecture is made for people. It does not kill the characters, but always opens up new views and perspectives. "
The script is structured in such a way that the present takes place in winter, while the flashbacks cut several times in between land in summer, albeit in different years. The film was therefore shot in two stages: July / August 2017 and January / February 2018.
A key scene from the present opens the film: Georg goes to the car with Jacob and speeds away with him, although an angry protesting Sophie runs after them. This scene repeats itself after about an hour, when the prehistory has arrived in the present. The first time the scene is told “objectively” from the long shot; the second time she changes back and forth more subjectively between the perspectives of Georg and Sophie.
When choosing a non-linear narrative style, Bliese said, it wasn't so much about the contrast between up and down:
“It was more about not giving a linear interpretation of this story of separation, but rather to provide pieces of the puzzle from which each viewer can assemble his own version. I couldn't have told otherwise about a breakup. If there is one thing I know about breakups, it is really that everyone has had their own “true” story, and they are all equally valid. That makes it so difficult to communicate. "
Financing, staff and staffing
The film is a production of the German Film and Television Academy Berlin (DFFB) , in coproduction with Rundfunk Berlin-Brandenburg (RBB) . The director Miriam Bliese and the producer Clemens Köstlin are co-producers; for both it is their graduation film at the DFFB. The film was funded as part of the “Leuchtstoff Initiative” of the Medienboard Berlin-Brandenburg and the RBB; the FFA film funding agency was also involved.
The cameraman Markus Koob is also a former DFFB graduate. Beatrice Schultz was responsible for the production design, the costume design is by Waris Klampfer, the make-up by Jil La Monaca Broidy. Editor Dietmar Kraus edited the film ; the sound design was in the hands of Marc Reinkober & Kai Ziarkowski (original sound), Hannes Marget (sound design) and Jan Pasemann (mix).
At the time of filming, the two main actors Birte Schnöink and Ole Lagerpusch were primarily known as theater actors. Miriam Bliese had also looked specifically in this direction:
“It was clear to me from the start that I wanted to work with theater actors. I had written incredibly long scenes, the longest was 18 pages, and I knew that I wanted to shoot in long arcs. (...) Besides, that might sound a bit strange, I really wanted to have actors who could “just stand there”. That is not at all taken for granted. For the most part, my film is set in front of the door, which is actually a disaster for actors because there are hardly any props to hold on to. There is no door frame to lean into, no coffee cup to drink from. This is really advanced acting because you have to take all the hold out of yourself. I knew Birte Schnöink and Ole Lagerpusch both from the theater and knew that they were great, I just had to find out what kind of couple they would make. When I saw them together at the casting, it was clear to me that they would be a very special couple that I was totally interested in personally. "
For Lagerpusch, after a few supporting roles, it was the first leading role in a feature film. For Schnöink it was the second leading role after her impersonation of Henriette Vogel in Amour Fou, who was nominated for the Austrian Film Prize 2015 . Justus Fischer, who plays her six-year-old son Jakob, was in front of a camera for the very first time.
music
There is no music composed especially for the film, but a number of songs, including some famous hits from the 1950s to 1970s. All pieces of music have their origin within the scenes of the film - be it because they are played on the radio, boom out of party boxes, or because the protagonists sing the song themselves.
The hits used are:
- On the Bay of Biscay (Drive Me To The Distance ...) - Music & Text by Jakob Pfeil, interpreted a. a. by Heino and Freddy Quinn , sung into the baby monitor in the film by Georg.
- Anneliese - composed and interpreted by Hans-Arno Simon ; Sung in the film by Jakob and Georg, who accompanies on a guitar.
- Lovesickness is not worth it - music: Christian Bruhn , text: Georg Buschor , u. a. interpreted by Siw Malmkvist ; sung in the film by Jakob, Sophie and Georg.
- When will it be summer again? - Music: Christian Bruhn , text: Georg Buschor . In the film, theversion sungby Rudi Carrell in 1975 isplayed on the radio; Sophie and Georg sing along.
A different taste in music can be heard at the Stillzeit-Ende-Party: In addition to two songs by the Berlin punk band Smile and Burn , the hip-hop song Rooftops , sung and composed by Joe Madog (alias Johannes Bliese), brother of the Director.
The end-credits song When you shine comes from Carsten Meyer (music) and Barbara Stuetzel (text). It was re-sung by the leading actress Birte Schnöink, with piano accompaniment by Hekmat Qassar.
Regarding the use of the hits, the director said:
"The hits form an ironic commentary on the plot of the film, they quote an ideal image of love that has very little in common with today's everyday love life, and which we never completely get rid of as a dream."
evaluation
After the premiere at the Berlinale, Die Einzelteile der Liebe ran in the competition at the Filmkunstfest Schwerin and at the Festival of German Films in Ludwigshafen am Rhein. The German theatrical release in August 2019 was followed by the international premiere at the Chicago International Film Festival on October 23, 2019 in the New Directors Competition series .
reception
The film reviews of the Berlinale and the cinema release were mostly positive. The unusual staging concept, the acting achievements, and the way the film deals with its core issues of loss of love, separation and custody battles were frequently highlighted. The film service said that the “excellently played” film was a “precise, powerful and crystal-clear study that lived on beautiful laconicism, sentiment and self-irony”.
Eva-Christina Meier wrote that Miriam Bliese combined ...
"... distant observation, fast-paced dialogues and humorous vocal interludes to a not only aesthetically but also dramatically stimulating film narrative about the art of separating."
Others particularly praised the successful figure drawing. Matthias Pfeiffer wrote that the film had ...
“… Definitely also a documentary touch, which doesn't detract from the emotionality. On the contrary, it even makes it easier to put yourself in the characters' shoes. Fortunately, there is no melodramatic exaggeration here. This is precisely why Sophie and Georg have a high potential for identification. "
Andreas Köhnemann thought that the director and her actors demonstrated skillfully ...
“… How frustration and passively-aggressively expressed allegations creep into the life of the nuclear family. Both figures - and finally also Sophie's new friend Fred as the third member of the group - are drawn in a pleasingly differentiated manner; no one is solely to blame for the failure of the relationship. (...) Conclusion: A precise and clever look at relationship dynamics, concisely written and wonderfully played. "
The concept of having almost all of the scenes set outside the block of flats and on the same doorstep was recognized by most of the film reviews. Gunda Bartels wrote in the Berliner Tagesspiegel : “The idea is impressive. A chamber play outside. A love and separation story that doesn’t play out in the private bed or at the kitchen table as usual, but at the public door. ”Her colleague Esther Buss took up the same term and spoke of a“ chamber play turned outward ”. The Berliner Morgenpost also agreed: like “shards of broken pieces put together”, here are the “fragments of a relationship as a chamber play without a chamber”.
A few critics complained, however, that this concept was not consistently applied to every scene. Harald Mühlbeyer wrote that there are a lot of things that the film aptly observes and brings across well. But the director apparently didn't trust her original concept. He added:
“And it just happens that the viewer notices the idea behind the film relatively quickly: scenes of a relationship, whereby the private space of the relationship should be left out. And also: A drama about a child, whereby the child is not shown at all. At least at first. At some point Jacob comes into the picture, not just as a phantom in the background, but as an unauthorized protagonist, and again the film loses some of its consistency and stringency. "
On the other hand, Ulrich Sonnenschein found it appropriate that not everything is structured as neatly as one would initially assume:
“Within its strict staging structure,“ Die Einzelteile der Liebe ”is a lively film that is very much oriented towards the characters' everyday lives. The individual parts have strength and meaning for the whole, you just don't know exactly which ones. So this film is far closer to the messy feeling of love than any romance. "
Awards
The film was nominated at the Berlinale 2019 for the GWFF Prize for Best First Feature, endowed with 50,000 euros .
Web links
- The items of love in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- The individual parts of love at filmportal.de
- The individual parts of love at Arsenal Filmverleih
- Teresa Vena: Interview with Miriam Bliese. Berlin Film Festival, August 22, 2019 .
- Knut Elstermann : Berlinale Nighttalk with Miriam Bliese and Ole Lagerpusch. (Video) Radio Eins , February 12, 2019 .
Individual evidence
- ↑ Certificate of Release for The Items of Love . Voluntary self-regulation of the film industry (PDF; test number: 192129 / K).
- ↑ The parts of love. Berlinale , 2019, accessed on January 8, 2020 .
- ↑ a b The parts of love. Film portal , accessed on January 8, 2020 .
- ↑ a b c Gunda Bartels: Love and separation on the doorstep. Der Tagesspiegel , February 12, 2019, accessed on January 8, 2020 .
- ↑ At the door. Film portal , accessed on January 8, 2020 .
- ↑ a b Beatrice Schultz: The Components of Love. Retrieved January 10, 2020 .
- ↑ a b c Miriam Bliese: Press booklet of "The individual parts of love". (PDF) February 1, 2019, accessed January 8, 2020 .
- ^ A b c Teresa Vena: Interview with Miriam Bliese. Berlin Film Festival, August 22, 2019, p. 2 , accessed on January 10, 2020 .
- ↑ Miriam Bliese. First Steps , July 9, 2019, accessed January 10, 2020 .
- ↑ Clemens Köstlin. First Steps , July 9, 2019, accessed January 10, 2020 .
- ^ Markus Koob: The Components of Love. Retrieved January 10, 2020 .
- ↑ Waris Klampfer: The individual parts of love. Retrieved January 10, 2020 .
- ↑ The parts of love. Festival of German Films , accessed on January 8, 2020 .
- ^ The Components of Love. Chicago International Film Festival , accessed January 8, 2020 .
- ↑ Ralf Schenk: The individual parts of love. Film service , accessed January 10, 2020 .
- ↑ Eva-Christina Meier: “Sink yourselves! Listens! See! " Taz , February 7, 2019, accessed on January 10, 2020 .
- ^ Matthias Pfeiffer: rubble analysis. Artechock , accessed January 10, 2020 .
- ↑ Andreas Köhnemann: Critique: The individual parts of love. Spielfilm.de, accessed on January 10, 2020 .
- ^ Esther Buss: Family without instructions. Der Tagesspiegel , August 22, 2019, accessed on January 10, 2020 .
- ↑ Shards of a relationship. Berliner Morgenpost , August 22, 2019, accessed on January 8, 2020 .
- ↑ Harald Mühlbeyer: Festival review: The individual parts of love. Cinema time, accessed January 10, 2020 .
- ↑ Ulrich Sonnenschein: Critique of the individual parts of love. epd film , July 26, 2019, accessed on January 10, 2020 .
- ^ Romana Reich: Jury GWFF Award for Best First Feature. Weltexpresso, February 2, 2019, accessed on January 8, 2020 .