Mrs. Ella

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Movie
Original title Mrs. Ella
Mrs.-Ella-Logo.svg
Country of production Germany
original language German
Publishing year 2013
length 105 minutes
Age rating FSK 0
JMK 6
Rod
Director Markus Goller
script Dirk Ahner
production Matthias Schweighöfer ,
Dan Maag ,
Marco Beckmann
music Martin Todsharow ,
Andrej Melita ,
Peter Horn ,
Martin Probst
camera Ueli Steiger
cut Simon Gstöttmayr ,
Markus Goller
occupation

Ms. Ella is a German road movie by Markus Goller from 2013 . The tragicomic script for the film was written by author Dirk Ahner , based on Florian Beckerhoff 's novel of the same name from 2009, and is about the Berlin taxi driver Sascha, who meets the 87-year-old Ella after a traffic accident and abducts her from the hospital to travel to France and find her childhood sweetheart there. Matthias Schweighöfer and Ruth Maria Kubitschek appeared in front of the camera in the leading roles . The line-up was supplemented by August Diehl , Anna Bederke , Anna Thalbach , Anatole Taubman , Luc Feit and Marleen Lohse, among others .

The feature film produced by Warner Bros. and Schweighöfers Pantaleon Films was shot in autumn 2012 in Berlin and Brandenburg as well as in Paris and Brittany and opened in German cinemas on October 17, 2013. With over 1.1 million visitors in Germany alone, it became the fifth most successful German production of the 2013 cinema year. The German Film and Media Assessment (FBW) awarded the film the title valuable after its release. Furthermore, Ms. Ella received three Jupiter nominations, from which Ruth Maria Kubitschek emerged as the winner.

action

Sascha is a former medical student and taxi driver in Berlin. When he learns from his girlfriend Lina that he is pregnant, his life turns upside down and he has an accident. In the hospital, he met 87-year-old Ella Freitag, who was about to have an eye operation. Since Sascha learns her medical background and the intervention, which is in principle unnecessary, would be too great a risk, he kidnaps her from the hospital.

At home, Mrs. Ella, as Sascha calls her, sees the separation of Lina and Sascha. Because the police are looking for Sascha because of the kidnapping, he wants to take her back to the hospital, but Mrs. Ella refuses. Instead, they drive to an abandoned hospital with Sascha's roommate Klaus in the Berlin area. Here Mrs. Ella had a relationship with an American soldier named Jason after the Second World War .

Sascha finds out that Jason last lived in Paris and wants to arrange a reunion. The three of them decided to go to Paris. But here they hear that Jason has moved. In a nursing home they find out the new address on the Breton coast. Shortly after Paris, Klaus' car breaks down. During the repair period, Klaus takes his wife Ella for a ride on a motorcycle. This leads to a dispute between Klaus and Sascha, which is soon resolved.

Meanwhile, Ms. Ella has moved on to Jason's place of residence. There she meets Anna, Jason's daughter, who tells her that Jason died the previous year. After a short period of mourning, Ella returns to Berlin with Sascha and Klaus. Immediately after their arrival, Ella thanks Sascha for the wonderful time and dies. He finally makes up with Lina.

background

Emergence

Ms. Ella is based on the debut novel of the same name by author Florian Beckerhoff , which was published by List Verlag in 2009 . In Los Angeles, director Markus Goller was made aware of the material by his neighbor, the film producer Katja Emke, who also suggested it as a template for his next film project. After reading the novel, Goller approached Matthias Schweighöfer , with whom he had already worked on the comedy Friendship! (2010) and which he considered to be the right choice in the role of Sascha. According to Goller, Schweighöfer turned out to be the “right draft horse for the new project” after he had promised not only to take on the leading role, but also to implement the film together with his producer partners Dan Maag and Marco Beckmann. After What a Man (2011) andschlussmacher (2013), Ms. Ella became the third cinema production by the production company Pantaleon Films, founded in 2009 .

The dramaturge Angelika Mönning, employed in the development department of Pantaleon Films, designed the film version of Ms. Ella together with Goller and the dedicated screenwriter Dirk Ahner . Ahner described the week-long process of script work as a full collaboration between himself, Mönning and Goller. Although the novel appealed to him, Ahner found some adjustments for the film adaptation to be useful, which among other things led to a stronger emphasis on the external plot in order to make the inner workings of the main character Sascha, much described in the book, more visible. Beckerhoff, who supported the filming from the start, approved any changes to the film version that were necessary for dramaturgical reasons.

occupation

August Diehl (2017)

Emrah Ertem was responsible for the cast of the film. Ruth Maria Kubitschek took over the role of the eponymous wife Ella . At the time of Ertem's request, the actress had not been in front of the camera for nine months and was already preparing for her retirement . As a connoisseur of the novel, however, she wanted to audition. Goller, who had "already had Kubitschek on his screen", but could not imagine her as a sickly lady far from her best ager roles on TV, was finally convinced when Kubitschek came along during the test shoots without a mask and with a wig white hair played. Anna Bederke was cast by Sascha's friend Lina. Bederke was with Schweighöfer already concluded makers came together in front of the camera and Goller had convinced through their interaction with this.

The role of Sascha's best friend Klaus was filled with August Diehl , whose engagement was preceded by an intensive but unsuccessful search. Although Diehl was counted among the favorites among the producers, it was not believed that they could win him over to the project. In the end, it was Ertem who asked Diehl for the role of Klaus - knowing full well that Diehl had previously consistently rejected more than 30 comedy material. The team was all the more surprised when he immediately agreed and brought in significant ideas and aspects for his role and the framework, which were also incorporated into the later script. Anna Thalbach took over the role of nurse Erika, for whom they were looking for "a real Berliner".

Filming

In Landévennec , Brittany , the Eglise de Notre Dame served as a backdrop.

Ms. Ella marked the start of an exclusive four-picture deal between Pantaleon Film and Warner Bros. Entertainment Germany . The production was funded by the German Film Funding Fund (DFFF), the Film Funding Agency (FFA), the Medienboard Berlin-Brandenburg (MBB) and the FilmFernsehFonds Bayern (FFFB). The shooting took place from September 19 to November 16, 2012 in Germany and France. In France, the team spent ten days filming in the Finistère department in Brittany . Various locations in the western part of the peninsula were used as film sets, including Brest , Camaret-sur-Mer , Quimper , Quimperlé , Beuzec-Cap-Sizun and Landévennec, as well as stages in Ménez-Hom , Pont Croix and the Pointe du Van . Goller had originally wanted to shoot the scenes in Mrs. Ella on the Atlantic coast in Normandy , his visit to Omaha Beach near Colleville-sur-Mer and Saint-Laurent-sur-Mer , where thousands of soldiers died as part of Operation Neptune in World War II were, however, felt in the run-up to the shooting as "extremely depressing". Further scenes were shot over two days in Paris , where a second shooting team was sent to film street sequences due to the logistical challenges of the city. The crew was confronted with constant weather changes due to the filming start date in early autumn. Since one of the two days of shooting in Paris was completely rainy, some scenes that were set in Paris were later filmed in Berlin-Buch.

In the Federal Republic of Germany, the film was mainly shot in and around Berlin . In order to be able to capture the much-filmed capital in a more differentiated light, Goller chose unconventional approaches, which included filming in the early morning hours, which meant a considerable amount of extra work for actors and team. As a first take in Berlin, Goller and his cameraman Ueli Steiger also came up with a complicated vertical camera movement that would have required a camera crane of such enormous size that was not available in Germany at the time of shooting. In the end, a construction crane was used as a substitute, on which the running camera was lowered. The scenes of the film that played in the hospital were made in the Benjamin Franklin University Hospital in Lichterfelde , and further interior scenes in Berlin-Buch . The sanatorium complex in Beelitz-Heilstätten in Brandenburg in the Potsdam-Mittelmark district acted as a hospital ruin. In addition, sequences were created in Rüdersdorf near Berlin in the Märkisch-Oderland district .

reception

Reviews

Björn Becher from Filmstarts found that Goller's tragicomedy had “in the end, despite some impressive compositions, more similarities to Schweighöfer's own directing work: a conventional dramaturgy, many unimaginatively revived clichés, sweeping and pseudo-critical swipes (this time against profiteers in the health service) and at least a handful of enjoyable scenes ". Ms. Ella fits seamlessly into the series of previous Schweighöfer in-house productions such as What a Man (2011) andschlussmacher (2013). In doing so, Goller "does indeed show his ability, but too seldom can put his stamp on the work".

The magazine Cinema judged that Ms. Ella “doesn't necessarily convince with narrative finesse”, “but is so charmingly and warmly staged” that “even the anger over the all too harmonious finale quickly evaporated”. After Dieter Hallervorden, "Ruth Maria Kubitschek is now celebrating a touching screen comeback". Kino.de wrote the “Mix of comedy and road movie, which sometimes strikes a serious note, is a production by Matthias Schweighöfer's company Pantaleon Films and was staged by the director of A very hot number, Markus Goller. Schweighöfer, who also acts as the main actor, lets his wonderful colleague Ruth Maria Kubitschek go first ”.

Christiane Peitz, editor at Tagesspiegel , described Ms. Ella as a "turbulent, cool, snotty (just no respect for age and infirmity!) Comedy". That could "not only the pretty best friends - French, the Germans can too". She praised both Schweighöfer's facial expressions and the performance of Diehl's “better punchlines”, but criticized the tonal change from the middle of the film: “This is what distinguishes the French Pretty Best Friends from the German comedy, which neatly separates joke and melody . Laugh and cry? One at a time, please. Just not a Halligalli of feelings. And the comedy dies for fear of its own anarchy . "

Even Der Spiegel drew comparisons to French productions such as The neck of the Giraffe (2004) or Couple it is easier (2009). The humor in Ms. Ella “fortunately relies only a little on slapstick and all the more on bizarre moments in everyday life to create comedy. On scenes that look like little skits. And self-irony. A warm-hearted romance emerged from this recipe. A Schmonzette, of course. But still nice. ”The German Film and Media Assessment (FBW) awarded the production the title valuable . The film can be classified as a "sentimental comedy". His strengths include "shaping the relationship between two generations while unobtrusively embedding a mutual maturation and learning process and not positioning a generational conflict with slapstick". With their play, the main actors enabled "identification, but also thoughtfulness and distancing."

success

Ms. Ella premiered on October 8, 2013 at the Cinestar cinema in the Sony Center in Berlin and was released for public screening in Germany on October 17 by its distributor. After the end of the first screening weekend, the film recorded around 210,000 moviegoers, displacing Alfonso Cuarón's space thriller Gravity from the top of the German cinema charts. By the end of the year the film had 1,188,430 admissions at German box offices across Germany. Ms. Ella placed 26th in the most popular films of the year. In addition, the tragicomedy advanced to become the fifth most successful German production in 2013. In Switzerland, Ms. Ella entered the German-Swiss cinema charts at number eight with 4,381 visitors. The film stayed in the top 25 for four weeks and attracted around 12,260 viewers up to the screeners.

Awards

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Certificate of release for Ms. Ella . Voluntary self-regulation of the film industry , September 2013 (PDF; test number: 141 032 K).
  2. ↑ Age rating for Mrs. Ella . Youth Media Commission .
  3. ↑ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w Press kit: Ms. Ella . In: Pantaleon Film . Retrieved October 13, 2018.
  4. ↑ Why the chemistry is right at Kubitschek and Schweighöfer . Retrieved October 13, 2018.
  5. ↑ a b film «Frau Ella». Silence, on tour! ( French ) Retrieved October 13, 2018.
  6. ↑ a b Ms. Ella, Germany 2012/2013, feature film . In: film portal . Retrieved October 13, 2018.
  7. ^ Markus Goller and Mrs. Ella end the summer in the Finistère . Retrieved October 13, 2018.
  8. ↑ Tournage. Scènes nocturnes de «Frau Ella» à Quimper ( French ). Retrieved October 13, 2018.
  9. ↑ Location for: FRAU ELLA . Retrieved October 13, 2018.
  10. ^ Criticism from the FILMSTARTS editorial team. In: Filmstarts.de . Retrieved November 4, 2018 .
  11. ↑ Conclusion. In: Cinema.de . Retrieved November 4, 2018 .
  12. ↑ a b review. In: Kino.de . Retrieved November 4, 2018 .
  13. ↑ The Stussmacher. In: Tagesspiegel.de . Retrieved November 4, 2018 .
  14. ↑ Mrs. Ella seeks the meaning of life. In: Der Spiegel . Retrieved November 4, 2018 .
  15. ↑ Mrs. Ella: Predicate valuable, feature film, Germany 2013 . FBW-Filmbeval.de . Retrieved November 4, 2018.
  16. ↑ Box Office: Schweighöfer brings "Gravity" back to earth . Spiegel.de . October 22, 2013. Retrieved October 22, 2013.
  17. ↑ KINOaktuell: What you wanted: Münster's cinema year 2013, C. Lou Lloyd, Filminfo No. 4, 23-29 January 2014, p. 24 f.
  18. ↑ Film hit list: Annual list (international) 2013 . Film Funding Agency . FFA.de. Retrieved November 4, 2018.
  19. ↑ Film hit list: Annual list (national) 2013 . Film Funding Agency . FFA.de. Retrieved November 4, 2018.
  20. ↑ Hit Parade - German-speaking Switzerland . Hung media. Hitparade.ch. Retrieved November 4, 2018.
  21. ↑ Mrs. Ella . Hung media. Hitparade.ch. Retrieved November 4, 2018.
  22. ↑ Mrs. Ella. German Film and Media Rating FBW, accessed on February 6, 2018 .