Greta (2018)

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Movie
German title Greta
Original title Greta
Country of production USA , Ireland
original language English
Publishing year 2018
length 98 minutes
Age rating FSK 16
JMK 14
Rod
Director Neil Jordan
script Ray Wright ,
Neil Jordan
production Lawrence Bender ,
James Flynn ,
Sidney Kimmel ,
John Penotti ,
Karen Richards
music Javier Navarrete
camera Seamus McGarvey
cut Nick Emerson
occupation
synchronization

Neil Jordan at the premiere at the 2018 Toronto International Film Festival

Greta is an American - Irish psychological thriller from director Neil Jordan that was shown publicly for the first time at the Toronto International Film Festival in 2018 .

action

Frances, who recently lost her mother, works as a waitress in a posh New York restaurant. She lives with her friend Erica in their comfortable loft apartment in Manhattan . In contrast to Frances, Erica leads an intense party life and is mainly interested in fashion and yoga. Frances, deeply suffering from the loss of her mother, feels lonely.

When she finds a handbag on the New York subway, she returns the bag to its rightful owner. The address is in a gloomy, seedy area, and the apartment building in question seems almost dilapidated. The bag belongs to an elderly lady who lives in an apartment full of antiques and all sorts of knickknacks. She seems a little eccentric, is French, is called Greta and is obviously happy about the young woman's visit. Spontaneously she invites her for coffee, Frances accepts and the two start a conversation: Greta loves classical music and earns her living with piano lessons.

Greta also feels lonely in New York. She is a widow and her only daughter lives in Paris. The two women become friends. They go for walks together, visit a church to commemorate their dead, and their relationship gradually becomes more intimate. One evening Greta is busy preparing dinner in the kitchen. When Frances opens a cupboard in search of candles, she finds a collection of identical bags, like the one she found in the subway, and then quickly leaves Greta's apartment.

Greta is highly manipulative and uses the handbags as bait to attract young women. Frances becomes increasingly creepy about Greta's intrusive behavior and she tries in vain to free herself from her clutches. Greta now follows her every step of the way, bothering her with messages and phone calls, stands for hours in front of the restaurant where Frances works and then lets her serve her as a guest to force a conversation. The scene culminates in Greta insulting Frances and finally falling into an uncontrolled frenzy, which ends with the straitjacket and a brief stay in the psychiatry. Since no protective measures are taken by the police, and Greta's behavior towards Frances is even played down at first, Frances Greta's attacks are vulnerable - a fateful mistake, as it soon turns out.

The fact that Frances gratefully accepts the older woman's maternal affection after the death of her own mother plays directly into the hands of the manipulative Greta. Greta herself had a deeply disturbed relationship with her biological daughter Nicola, which was characterized by numerous abuse on the part of Greta. For example, after making mistakes in piano lessons, the daughter was repeatedly locked up in a dark box for hours as a punishment, a treatment that initially drove her into alcoholism in adulthood and later even into suicide, as the course of the plot reveals.

production

After Jordan's vampire film Byzantium, Greta is his first feature film in seven years, the twelfth feature film with Stephen Rea and his first with Isabelle Huppert . Production companies were Sidney Kimmel Entertainment, Lawrence Bender Productions and Little Wave Productions.

The film was shot almost exclusively in studios in Dublin and Toronto, with the exception of some outdoor shots in New York. Javier Navarrete , who is responsible for the film's music, worked with Jordan on the Byzantinum . The pieces that Greta plays on the piano are recordings by Anthony Byrne, Brian Connor, Jenő Jandó , Earl Wild and Henrik Mawe.

synchronization

The German synchronization was for a dialogue book of Jörg Hartung and the dialogue director of Ronald Nitschke by the synchronous company Think Global Media in Berlin.

Role name actor Voice actor
Greta Hideg Isabelle Huppert Traudel Haas
Frances McCullen Chloë Grace Moretz Luisa Wietzorek
Erica Penn Maika Monroe Victoria Frenz
Chris McCullen Colm Feore Udo Schenk
Brian Cody Stephen Rea Ronald Nitschke

reception

The reviews for the film have been mixed, with a tendency towards negative overall ratings. The verdict ranges from "thoroughly unsuccessful film" to "well-made, suspense cinema trained on Hitchcock and Polanski" with Huppert as a "first-class film monster".

According to Kino-Zeit, Greta was proving to be a “over-the-top cliché parade” that could no longer be taken seriously at a very early age. Despite the occasional bright spot at Isabelle Huppert, she could do little to counter the banality of the script, which became more and more absurd towards the end, and the flat presentation of the film, which only superficially ponders about loneliness.

Philipp Stadelmaier of the Süddeutsche Zeitung writes: “There is little better for a cinema viewer than to be tricked into in a clever way. It is the realm of dreams and nightmares that Jordan is exploring. Moments when it is not clear whether you are still conscious or hallucinating because you have been drugged and kidnapped. The origin of "Greta" is a childhood trauma, being at the mercy of a mother who locks her children in a small dark box as punishment. "You need a mother", this sentence addressed by Greta to Frances is perhaps the biggest nightmare in this thriller, which is all the more shocking because it began as a harmless romance. "

Awards

  • 2019: Dublin Film Critics Award for Best Irish Film

Web links

Commons : Greta  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Release certificate for Greta . Voluntary self-regulation of the film industry (PDF; test number: 188799 / K). Template: FSK / maintenance / type not set and Par. 1 longer than 4 characters
  2. ↑ Age rating for Greta . Youth Media Commission .
  3. ↑ Last Taboo: Stephen Rea talks The Crying Game Tiff, November 7, 2017, accessed May 29, 2019
  4. ↑ Soundtrack IMDb
  5. ↑ a b greta. In: synchronkartei.de. German dubbing file , accessed on May 31, 2019 .
  6. ↑ Knut Elstermann : Unintentionally funny: Neil Jordan's stalking thriller "Greta" mdr Kultur, accessed on May 30, 2019
  7. ↑ Lukas Foerster: Greta / Neil Jordan , in: Filmbulletin, May 7, 2019, accessed on May 30, 2019
  8. ↑ Christopher Diekhaus: Greta (2018) , kino-zeit.de, accessed on May 29, 2019
  9. ↑ Philipp Stadelmeier: Wait until it gets dark Süddeutsche Zeitung, May 15, 2019, accessed on May 29, 2019