A mysterious summer

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Movie
Original title A mysterious summer
Country of production Germany
original language German
Publishing year 2009
length 88 minutes
Rod
Director Johannes Grieser
script Hannah Hollinger
production Gabriele Lohnert ,
Norbert Sauer
music Robert Schulte-Hemming ,
Jens Langbein
camera Volker Tittel
cut Michael Reysz
occupation

A Mysterious Summer is a thriller drama by director Johannes Grieser from 2009. In the lead role , Suzanne von Borsody embodies the successful photographer Esther Kaufmann, who is in love with the married Munich publisher Rolf Berghoff, who dies under mysterious circumstances.

action

The married publisher Rolf Berghoff has a love affair with the successful photographer Esther Kaufmann, to whom he shows an illustrated book that he has published. A short time later, Esther is on vacation for a few days in his holiday home in the Bavarian Alps . When Rolf visits her there, he confesses to her in a beer garden that besides her, he has another love affair: his assistant Ira, who, moreover, is expecting a child from him. Confronted with this news unexpectedly, Esther, who is unsure anyway whether the men still find her attractive because of her age, hastily leaves the locality.

A short time later, however, Esther calmed down again and made peace with Rolf again. As a result, there is also another sexual intercourse between the two. The following morning, Rolf decides to walk to the train station in order not to have to wake Esther so early and to leave from there on a business trip to Switzerland.

When Esther wakes up, she tries in vain to reach Rolf on his cell phone in order to speak to him again. Unfortunately, however, it only ever reaches his answering machine. She can only guess what the reason for this is: Either Rolf has his cell phone switched off, or he is outside of cellular network coverage.

Esther's neighbor in the holiday complex is young Paul, who has already spent his childhood there. His single mother Helga worked as a cleaner in the neighboring holiday homes owned by Rolf and his friends Stephan and Helmut. For several years, however, the owners of the houses have rarely shown up. Esther suspects that it might be related to the fact that Tom, Rolf's son, who was married to his wife Marina, was killed in a skiing accident in Canada. Furthermore, there may be a curse in the area, because Helmut, an architect and another owner of a holiday home, died a few years ago of an incurable disease. Another holiday home owner and friend of Rolf, the public prosecutor Stephan Rainbold, also experienced misfortune when his wife left him. In addition, Paul's mother Helga hanged herself ten years ago. Her son Paul then came to a home for difficult-to-raise children, from which he was only released a few weeks ago and returned to the place where he grew up.

One night Esther is awakened by the loud music coming from the neighboring holiday home and there catches Paul having sexual intercourse with the much younger Sascha, the seventeen-year-old daughter of a police officer. It turns out that the young Sascha would actually much rather live in a big city and that she is very afraid of getting older and then no longer pleasing the men.

Marina, Rolf's wife, instructs Stephan, the owner of the holiday home, to check her holiday home to see if Rolf is there. As instructed, Stephan enters the property and, to his astonishment, does not meet Rolf, but of course his lover Esther, who is quartered there by Rolf's agreement. Stephan decides to stay in his own holiday home until it is clear where Rolf is currently.

The plot of the film takes a dramatic turn when Rolf's body is recovered from a lake. However, Esther does not tell the two investigating police officers, Schweinsberger and Redl, that she found the partially burned remains of Rolf's wallet in the fireplace of the house in which young Paul lives.

Furthermore, during the interrogation, Esther hides the fact that she observed that on the morning when Rolf wanted to walk to the train station, Paul came home with a pick-up truck, although the latter gave the police the statement that he was on the said Morning with the young Sascha from a visit to a discotheque was on the bike. However, Paul does not tell the investigating officers that Esther was Rolf's lover.

However, when the police examined the pickup truck and found damage to the paintwork on a fender, Paul, who was considered as the driver, was arrested. The presumption of the police that Rolf's death could be related to a traffic accident, however, comes to nothing after the autopsy of Rolf's body: The autopsy shows beyond doubt that Rolf died of natural causes. The medical report also reveals that Rolf was already dead when he collapsed on his way to the train station and was subsequently run over by the pickup truck. Further investigations reveal that Paul, when the driver of the pickup truck who accidentally ran over Rolf, who was already dead, removed Rolf's wallet after the collision and then left the scene of the accident without permission. Further investigations also reveal that Paul had a significant amount of alcohol in his blood at the time of the crime; Paul had also used drugs at the time in question. It is now very likely that Paul was not directly responsible for Rolf's death, but that he sank his body in the lake to cover up the theft of his wallet and the traces that could indicate it.

As the story progresses, Esther notices a missing cassette in Rolf's video collection. When she then goes to Stephan, she sees him watching an old vacation film that Rolf made. This shows how Stephan fixes Paul's mother Helga's dress after the two of them had fun in a secluded place. In the further course of the film plot it becomes clear that Helga couldn't cope with it mentally, was first raped by Rolf's friends in a drunken state and Rolf, with whom she was in love, had also watched. When Rolf then raped her himself, everything was obviously too much for her and the main reason that Helga hanged herself on the night of the multiple rape she had to endure.

Esther convinces the public prosecutor Stephan Rainbold, who knew about the circumstances of Helga's death at the time, to make his statement to the police. At the same time, Esther leaves the holiday resort to go back home.

Production notes

Gabriele Lohnert and Norbert Sauer produced for UFA television production on behalf of ZDF . Filming began September 16, 2008 and ended on October 20 of the same year. The film was shot in Oberaudorf .

Release date and different film title

A mysterious summer was first broadcast on German and French television on Arte on September 8, 2009 . The film was shown a good two months earlier at the Munich Film Festival on June 27, 2009. In France the film was called A l'ombre des Alpes and in Hungary the production was televised under the title Egy titokzatos nyár .

Reviews

TV Spielfilm states that the plot “[...] also contains real, well-observed and exciting moments”. The summary of the program magazine is: "Overambitious, but ultimately worthwhile".

Rainer Tittelbach is of the opinion that the production is about "too much drama, too much crime, [and] too much fate [turns]". In his closing sentence, the journalist and television critic says: "The new German compulsion to never tell a relationship drama without death and police, without suspicions and entanglements, has a noticeable impact on the quality of the film - despite Hannah Hollinger".

The lexicon of international films sums up that the television drama “is about the unfortunate amalgamation of three family fates; the love of truth of the initially hesitant protagonists is placed in the foreground without any deeper ambitions ”.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ A mysterious summer. In: filmportal.de. Retrieved November 13, 2015 .
  2. ↑ A Mysterious Summer (TV Movie 2009) - Release Info - IMDb. In: imdb.com. Retrieved November 13, 2015 .
  3. ^ A mysterious summer - film review - film - TV SPIELFILM. In: tvspielfilm.de. Retrieved November 13, 2015 .
  4. ^ A mysterious summer - review of the film - Tittelbach.tv. In: tittelbach.tv. Retrieved November 13, 2015 .
  5. ↑ Two thousand and one. Film Lexicon FILMS from AZ - A mysterious summer. In: zweiausendeins.de. Retrieved November 13, 2015 .