One year in winter

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Movie
Original title One year in winter
Country of production Germany
original language German
Publishing year 2008
length 128 minutes
Age rating FSK 12
Rod
Director Caroline Link
script Caroline Link
production Robert W. Cort
Scarlett Lacey
Martin Moszkowicz
Oliver Nommsen
Uschi Reich
music Niki Reiser / "Signal To Noise" by Peter Gabriel
camera Bella halves
cut Patricia Rommel
occupation

In Winter a Year is a German film drama from 2008 based on the novel of the same name (original title: Aftermath) by Scott Campbell . Directed by Caroline Link , Karoline Herfurth and Josef Bierbichler can be seen in the leading roles . The world premiere was at the Toronto International Film Festival , and it was released on November 13, 2008. The central painting by Karoline Herfurth and Cyril Sjöström used in the film was made by the Munich painter Florian Süssmayr .

action

Interior designer Eliane, who lives in Munich, commissioned the painter Max Hollander to paint a portrait of her children Alexander and Lilli. The distraught Eliane wants to use the portrait to remember Alexander, who took his own life (with a hunting rifle) almost a year ago, and provides Max with pictures and videos of Alexander. She wants Lilli to come to Max for a few sessions for the portrait; but she is not very fond of it, as she finds it repulsive to hang a portrait of her dead brother on the wall "as decoration". In contrast to her mother, the talented Lilli does not live in a disciplined manner and loses her lead role at the theater academy through arguments with her teacher. In her relationship with the artist Aldo, she tries to find closeness and intimacy, which he does not want to give her. During the sessions, Lilli met Max with reservations, while Max tried to look into her and capture her character. He recognizes the deep relationship between the siblings and understands Lilli's emotional world better and better. In doing so, he gradually finds access to unprocessed parts of his own story, which also contains personal losses. The relationship of trust between painter and model deepens and they carefully approach each other. The resulting portrait does not meet Eliane's expectations, but her inner freeze breaks open, so that she moves towards Lilli. Ultimately, Eliane begins to come to terms with the death of her son. Lilli, however, manages to forgive her brother when she accepts that she cannot find out the exact reason for the suicide.

subjects

The film deals with coping with a family catastrophe and dealing with grief. The narrative does not aim to uncover the secret of the dead person, rather the maturation of his sister is central. The process is initiated by the painter. It is not one of the well-known affairs between an artist and his model that develops, but “a story of comforting closeness, carefully told in half-steps of affection, which is good for both.” for which Lilli is now ready.

criticism

In the film service , Hans Peter Koll spoke of the "tremendous presence" of the actors and the impressive images. "If you were to look at the plot detached from the many finesse in terms of visual composition and performance, you would have to critically identify the trivial pitfalls of the plot, which often touch on the melodramatic, even kitschy - of course without any fear of contact, but rather with visible and tangible (self- )Awareness; Caroline Link strives for a thoroughly "popular" movie without offering mass-produced goods, but rather intelligent, compositionally rich emotional cinema. "

Anke Sterneborg from the Süddeutsche Zeitung remarked that hardly any German film has designed such large spaces. On Link's narrative style, she said: “Very carefully and mysteriously, she plays around the void that the suicide of an eighteen-year-old has left in a family. The melody of the film emerges very slowly from individual tones, and just as a picture is created from many details, the story grows from the abundance of memories. ”Despite its depth, the film appears“ light and airy ”and offers a rare richness in acting .

The FAZ reviewer Verena Lueken also emphasized what a great capital German cinema has in its actors. Contrary to the audience's expectations, the director keeps Lilli's relationship with the painter in limbo, “just as the whole film has an amazing lightness in view of the subject of death and mourning. (...) It's about the greatest, the most serious feelings. But the director doesn't force them on the viewer, she leaves them entirely to the characters and looks at them with discretion. The story could have turned into anything, something pompous, tearful, pathological, sticky. Instead, we see what was once called mourning work and have the feeling that yes, it could work that way. "

The material could have "slipped too easily into the sticky", but it is in good hands, found Birgit Roschy in epd film for "staging great emotions with empathy and distance". Dialogues and milieus seem real, Bierbichler as "primeval creature with a soft core" is great and Herfurth casts a spell. The judgment is somewhat clouded by the statements that Zischler seems a bit smooth and the film is not entirely free of “kitschy meanings”.

Urs Jenny had bigger reservations in Der Spiegel , he missed a goal to which the story leads. “Caroline Link is not one who“ puts pressure ”on, she moves openly from episode to episode, but this time she doesn't have this nice trust in the momentum of her story - as if the matter had been tinkered with for too long and under too different circumstances Luck brought. ”The characters of Harfouch and Zischler talked stilted that their world was only illustrated on television. But the pictures are powerful, Herfurth arouses compassion and Bierbichler gives his painter “weight and depth”.

Daniel Kothenschulte from the Frankfurter Rundschau spoke of a “piece of photorealistic salon painting” : the plot “fits into the conventions of bourgeois psychodramas all too without contradiction”. Instead of psychology, Link prefers surfaces and the external, the mother figure remains one-dimensional, the film never becomes touching and feels long. "Niki Reiser's omnipresent film music and Bella Halben's camera only double the solidity of the bourgeois milieu instead of breaking it up and really emotionalizing it." Only Bierbichler makes his figure "surprisingly alive."

Awards

Karoline Herfurth's performance was honored with the Bavarian Film Prize for Best Young Actress and the German Film Critics' Prize . In the winter of one year , it also received nominations for the German Film Prize in the categories of Best Feature Film (Silver Film Prize), Leading Actor (Josef Bierbichler) and Editing. Film composer Niki Reiser received the award.

The German Film and Media Assessment FBW in Wiesbaden awarded the film the rating particularly valuable.

Radio play and audio film

On the basis of film dialogues, a radio play with Barbara Nüsse as the narrator was released in 2008 (181 min.).

A year later, Bayerischer Rundfunk and Constantin Film produced an audio description of the film. The image description spoken by Katja Schild was nominated for the German Audio Film Award in 2010 and is part of the DVD release.

literature

Novel

conversations

  • With Caroline Link in the Stuttgarter Nachrichten , November 12, 2008, p. 14: "Family is a curse, a blessing, a grace"
  • With Karoline Herfurth in the Frankfurter Rundschau , November 17th, 2008: "I had to cry almost every day"

Review mirror

positive

rather positive

  • epd film no. 11/2008, p. 47, by Birgit Roschy: In winter one year

mixed

  • Der Spiegel , November 10, 2008, p. 180, by Urs Jenny: The mourning and its price

rather negative

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Release certificate for one year in winter . Voluntary self-regulation of the film industry, August 2008 (PDF; test number: 114 828 K).
  2. ↑ a b Birgit Roschy: One year in winter . In: epd Film No. 11/2008, p. 47
  3. ↑ a b Urs Jenny: The grief and its price . In: Der Spiegel , November 10, 2008, p. 180
  4. ↑ a b Anke Sterneborg: The beautiful troublemaker ( Memento of the original from May 20, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.sueddeutsche.de archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. . In: Süddeutsche Zeitung , September 10, 2008
  5. ↑ a b Verena Lueken: What used to be called mourning work . In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung , November 12, 2008
  6. ↑ Hans Peter Koll: One year in winter . In: film-dienst No. 20/2008, p. 32
  7. ^ Daniel Kothenschulte : Long-awaited family tragedy . In: Frankfurter Rundschau , November 13, 2008
  8. ↑ In winter one year in the Hörfilm database of Hörfilm e. V.
  9. ↑ 8th German Audio Film Award 2010