Helmut Berger, my mother and I
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| Original title | Helmut Berger, my mother and I |
| Country of production |
Germany , Austria |
| original language | German |
| Publishing year | 2018 |
| length | 92 minutes |
| Rod | |
| Director | Valesca Peters |
| script | Valesca Peters |
| production |
Stefan Mathieu , Anahita Nazemi , Katrin Sandmann |
| music | David Minor |
| camera |
Patrick Jasim , Andreas Schiller |
| cut | Valesca Peters |
| occupation | |
| |
Helmut Berger, my mother and I is the directorial debut of Valesca Peters, who previously worked primarily as a film editor . The film premiered on March 7, 2019. The center of the plot is the aged actor Helmut Berger . "I wanted to give him back his dignity," said Peters, explaining her approach to directing.
action
It all started with a spontaneous Google search: What is actor Helmut Berger doing today? Bettina Vorndamme, the mother of director Valesca Peters, surfed the internet one night after she was separated from her partner. She was shocked by what she read about the once "most beautiful man" of the 1960s and 1970s. Helmut Berger was addicted, Helmut Berger was broke, Helmut Berger had crashed, she learned, again - and apparently even more violently than before. “This man has to be helped somehow,” thought Bettina Vorndamme. And then she simply called the long-forgotten screen star in his Salzburg domicile: there, the former Visconti muse lives in cramped, primitive conditions, largely isolated and above all without work. After the meeting in Paris, mother and daughter visit him in Salzburg. So Bettina Vorndamme finally begins her search for Helmut Berger in Salzburg's snowy landscape.
Shortly afterwards, Bettina Vorndamme invites him to her farm in Nordsehl in the Lower Saxony region. He will spend almost half a year there before moving to Berlin to rehearse for Albert Serra's theater production Liberté .
Because without great advance planning and basically in a kind of personal rescue mission, the less film-savvy controller Bettina Vorndamme guides Helmut Berger to her home. It doesn't take long for the capricious actor to actually sit on his mother's sofa in a village in Lower Saxony and stay there for several months. The country air is good for him - and while Helmut Berger spreads his life in front of the camera, the boundaries between film team, world star and family are blurring. In order to get back on track, Berger then tried both hypnosis and psychotherapy, but also radical alcohol and tablet withdrawal.
production
The film, sponsored by Nordmedia, was a co-production of the television stations ZDF , 3sat and ORF .
reception
Simon Hauck wrote in KinoZeit that you can feel “in this equally charming and subtle documentary study about the greatness and suffering of Helmut B. a thoroughly sincere and honest approach by the filmmaker to her object of desire: in stark contrast to Andreas Horvath's Venice scandal . ”At the same time, Peters does not ignore the obvious downsides of Berger:“ Valesca Peters meets him in Helmut Berger, my mother and I with tangible curiosity, plenty of puns and a pinch of chutzpah, which makes her documentary accessible to a wider audience as a whole, thanks to the name Helmut Berger may not even know anymore. Even though it cannot come up with big sensations in terms of content and ends relatively abruptly, it remains much more than just the attempt to rehabilitate a fallen angel on screen on film. "
EPD wrote: “The title of Valesca Peters' directorial debut suggests it. The young director takes a completely different path than Andreas Horvath, for example, with his documentary Helmut Berger, Actor, which premiered in Venice in 2015 . All the scandals provoked by the film star , who was discovered by Luchino Visconti , provided the impetus for Peters' film, but beyond that they play no role in it. [...] How easily the moment when he sits on an exercise bike in Vorndammes garden and stares into the distance could seem ridiculous. But Berger exudes a calm and dignity in this setting that makes you forget his brief appearance in the jungle camp as well as all the tabloid headlines. "Peters actually managed to take a look behind the mask that Berger usually presents to the public . “A look ahead, into the future, reveals a man who has never been able to free himself from the clutches of the past. Peters does not answer whether he will succeed at the age of almost 75. "
The author of the Filmdienst expressed reservations in his review: “The mother of the filmmaker Valesca Peters wants to help the actor Helmut Berger, who has fallen into the shallows of the boulevard, to find a proper job. Your fixed idea becomes the starting point for a documentary portrait that alternates between the history of relationships and the social program. Despite stylizing means such as staged scenes and off-texts spoken by Berger, the film is carried by the somewhat intrusive project of finding the "real" person behind the fictional character Berger. "
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b Helmut Berger, my mother and I. Kino Zeit, February 1, 2019, accessed on March 11, 2018 .
- ↑ The world star Helmut Berger lived largely unnoticed in Nordsehl. Retrieved May 26, 2019 .
- ↑ Helmut Berger, my mother and I at the 2019 Max Ophüls Prize Film Festival
- ↑ Helmut Berger, my mother and I at EPD
- ↑ Helmut Berger, my mother and I at Filmdienst