Across from
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| Original title | Across from |
| Country of production | Germany |
| original language | German |
| Publishing year | 2007 |
| length | 96 minutes |
| Age rating | FSK 16 |
| Rod | |
| Director | Jan Bonny |
| script | Jan Bonny, Christina Ebelt |
| production | Bettina Brokemper |
| music | Sonoton Munich |
| camera | Bernhard Keller |
| cut | Stefan Stabenow |
| occupation | |
| |
Opposite is a German film drama from 2007 and the feature film debut of the director Jan Bonny . The film premiered 20 May 2007, its premiere at the International Film Festival in Cannes and was released in Germany on October 11 of 2007. Opposite it was also presented at other international film festivals and awarded several film prizes.
action
Outwardly, the patrol officer Georg leads a happy family life with his attractive wife, the elementary school teacher Anne. The two have been married for 20 years and have two grown children. Because of his calm and level-headed manner, Georg is valued by his work colleagues. His younger colleague Michael especially admires him, also because of his apparently balanced marriage to Anne. When Georg heard about his upcoming promotion in the run-up to Christmas, the pressure around him and the expectations made him lose more and more control over the carefully maintained facade of his intact family life. Because the appearance of his harmonious marriage is deceptive. This has been in dire straits for a long time. Georg, who wants to please everyone at all times, is repeatedly physically abused by his wife, who does not feel respected and recognized. The adult children look away helplessly and Anne's father, on whom she and Georg are financially dependent, increases the emotional pressure that drives Anne to use physical violence against her husband through his disdain for them.
production
The screenplay for Gegenüber was created together with screenwriter and director Christina Ebelt . The film was shot from November 7th to December 18th, 2006, among other things with a movable hand-held camera in Essen and the surrounding area. The Cologne company Heimatfilm produced the opposite sponsored by the Filmstiftung NRW . WDR acted as co-producer .
Reviews
Kino.de describes Gegenüber as a "tough drama with which Jan Bonny paints very dark scenes of a marriage" and praises the film for the fact that the "consequences of physical and emotional violence" are "subtly staged and grandiose played". A “fateful labyrinth of pain” would open up, “in which speechlessness and dependency prevail.” In the news magazine Der Spiegel , Christian Buß also states that Bonny's film has its “most intense moments” “when it is very close to its main characters”. The viewer would enter rooms with them "which he cannot always fully oversee." "Familiarity and alienation" would enter into "a strange synthesis" in the artfully unlit petty bourgeois refuge (camera: Bernhard Keller).
“[The director] approaches his own material with incredible force. Mercilessly and with refined accuracy, he describes the state of a failed marriage. This is nothing for the faint of heart, but if you want to be shaken up in the cinema, GEGENBER is the right place for you.
“This debut by a Cologne film student is an extremely unusual drama that reveals a hell behind the facade of normal marital wear and tear. Matthias Brandt shines once again in the extremely multi-faceted depiction of a weak "strong man", and Viktoria Trauttmannsdorff also impresses with intensity. A nervous hand-held camera reflects mental fragmentation. "
“As a rule, young filmmakers often reflect on their own youth in their debuts and rely on self-made experiences, mostly in the areas of love and friendship. Or they pack their material in experimental, apparently innovative narrative forms that overshadow deeper insights and allow the films to float on the surface. Jan Bonny, on the other hand, does everything right on his debut and tells a difficult story in the drama “Gegenüber”, for which he finds an extremely suitable form. He was rightly honored with an honorable mention at this year's Cannes film festival; the script received an award at the Munich Film Festival. [...]
Bonny focuses entirely on his two main characters while telling the story and always stays very close to their conflict. In doing so, he succeeds in not exposing his characters, but rather involving the viewer in the story in a way that creates neither too much nor too little distance and enables the characters to be directly experienced. This works mainly thanks to the great performances of the two main actors Matthias Brandt and Victoria Trauttmansdorff. Both never let the viewer doubt the “authenticity” of the images and enable Jan Bonny to stage his story as a chamber play, with reduced locations and a subdued external plot. The script by Bonny and Cristina Ebelt also plays a major role in the success of the project. Side paths of the plot are often only sketched out briefly, nevertheless made plausible and never put on display or rolled out. "
“How Jan Bonny shows the petty-bourgeois family as a system of psychological and economic dependencies, inexorably precise, but without fear of empathy, that is more reminiscent of Fassbinder than contemporary colleagues. The opposite is also obliged to him insofar as he portrays Anne's behavior not as an individual mental illness, but as a symptom of this deeply pathological system. And in this the film is also highly topical, a bitterly necessary objection to the thesis that family is a “value in itself” in times of conservative backlash. "
“A blatant film that shows what you almost never see on television: Female violence against men is still a taboo. And that it is love that keeps these two in their relationship, like glue that prevents them from breaking out of their doom, that makes Jan Bonny's study completely bitter. "
Awards and nominations (selection)
Cannes International Film Festival 2007
- Nomination for the Caméra d'Or film award in the category Best Debut Film for Jan Bonny
- Special mention by the CICAE jury Cannes for Jan Bonny
- Nomination in the category Best Newcomer Film for Jan Bonny
First Steps Award 2007
- Nomination for the First Steps Award in the full-length feature film category for Jan Bonny
- Winner of the German Film Award in the Screenplay category for Jan Bonny and Christina Ebelt
New Faces Award 2008
- Nomination for the New Faces Award in the category Best Debut Film for Jan Bonny
- Nomination for the German Film Award in the category Best Acting Achievement - male leading role for Matthias Brandt
- Nomination for the German Film Prize in the category Best Acting Performance - Female Leading Role for Victoria Trauttmannsdorff
Web links
- Opposite in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- Opposite at filmportal.de
- Official website
Individual evidence
- ↑ Release certificate for the counterpart . Voluntary self-regulation of the film industry , December 2007 (PDF; test number: 112 399 K).
- ↑ Info about the German theatrical release of “Gegenüber” In: Moviepilot . Retrieved June 30, 2016.
- ↑ Entry on opposite on the website of german films
- ↑ Entry on opposite on the official website of the production company Heimatfilm
- ↑ kino.de , review by Kino.de; accessed on June 30, 2016.
- ↑ Marital drama "Opposite": When women beat men . Spiegel Online ; accessed on June 30, 2016
- ↑ Katrin Knauth: Review of opposite. ( Memento of the original from June 30, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. kino-zeit.de
- ^ Rüdiger Suchsland: The "German Day" in Cannes, paranoid Pakis, bodys in motion and the future of cinema . In: artechock
- ↑ Christian Horn: Review of Gegenüber. Filmstarts .de
- ↑ Maurice Lahde: Review of opposite . critic.de
- ↑ Christina Tilmann: “Opposite”: Wife Beats Husband - A film about everyday family horror with Matthias Brandt in the leading role . In: Der Tagesspiegel
