love life

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Movie
German title love life
Original title love life
Country of production Israel , Germany
original language English
Publishing year 2007
length 114 minutes
Age rating FSK 16
Rod
Director Maria Schrader
script Maria Schrader,
Laila Stieler
production Stefan Arndt ,
Andro Steinborn
music Niki Reiser
camera Benedict Neuenfels
cut Antje Zynga
occupation

Love life ( Hebrew חיי אהבה) is a German-Israeli fictional film from 2007 by Maria Schrader , which was awarded two Bavarian film prizes and also at the Rome Film Festival . The film is based on the bestseller of the same name by Zeruya Shalev , who has a small supporting role as a librarian.

action

Young Jara has been married for several years. She has excellent prospects for a career at university and lives in a nice apartment. However, her father, who is currently celebrating his 60th birthday, does not appear for the picnic that she has lovingly arranged and seems insecure and covering up difficulties. Her mother is hostile when an old family friend, Arie, who has lived in Paris since Jara was born, returns to Israel. His wife is terminally ill in a clinic. Jara quickly throws herself into a sexual relationship with Arie.

Although Arie treats her disrespectfully, she is always drawn to him. He describes herself as bored and looking for ever stronger stimuli, while she is torn between her previous life with her husband Joni and the often self-destructive search for alternatives. She repeatedly engages in the mostly exclusively sexual encounters with Arie, in which the past and the connection to her father and mother slowly become clearer. At that time Arie had loved Jara's mother, but since he could not have children, the mother married Jara's father, Arie's best friend, behind his back. Arie then moved to Paris, where his mother visited him with Jara, but he rejected her desire to live together. Jara's father then took them back to himself, but came to the clinic some time later for six months because of depression. Since they had never talked about it, Jara finds out in the end through Aria and feels a certain relief that she can now understand why her mother could "never love" her.

criticism

Most of the critics were concerned with the relationship between Jara and Arie and the question of whether the transfer of the novel into the film was successful. Some of them could not understand what attracts Jara to Arie, or they were bothered by the woman's unemancipated demeanor. Other aria performers certified Šerbedžija the necessary charisma and found the relationship interesting. As for the tension, it could be heard that the story sagged in the middle section or after a good start. Some critics were pleased to note that Schrader did not reproduce the inner monologues of the novel with the obvious means of an off-voice, but instead translated Jara's emotional world into images. A counter-opinion held this figure unsuccessful. The interspersed surreal motifs, for example the bees on the doorbell, were thought to be “put on”, for “intrusive” or “one-dimensional”, because the metaphor was torn from the context of the novel. The image compositions, on the other hand, were praised as “wonderfully framed tableaux” with a Jerusalem beyond postcard images. The film avoids emotional coldness, because cameraman Neuenfels “captures the incomparable light over Israel so brilliantly, uses it as a narrative level as brilliantly as no one has done it for a long time.” The music is “pleasantly reserved and pointedly used”.

In the interpretation of Die Welt critic Elmar Krekeler, the film tells of “a liberation through submission, primarily through sexual submission. The story of a confusion that also sets free. ”Schrader reveals the souls of the protagonists,“ only exposes the body when there is no other way ”, with a“ fragile, astonishingly beautiful ”leading actress. Despite the change to the outside perspective made compared to the novel, Schrader achieved "the same oppressive emotional force, gets the same inevitability (...) that is not the least of her achievements." Michael Althen, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung , found the protagonist's feelings in a sensitive way implemented in pictures. "And the film is characterized by the fact that it does not spend long with the facades of unsatisfactory bourgeoisie, but plunges headlong into the amour fou." In conclusion: "Only the French can do that."

The reviewer of epd Film , Anke Sterneborg, felt Schrader's “security in dealing with the novel, the closeness to the author and mutual trust.” The director transferred Shalev's stream of inner monologues “directly to the pictures”. In his role, Šerbedžija combines “a magnetic presence with the ennui of a man who has already seen and done everything. And the young Netta Garti, as Jara, combines the self-confident intelligence of a modern young woman with the archaic longing of a young girl for a dominant man. ”While several reviews describe Jara's relationship with Arie as an amour fou , it is for Claudia Schwartz from Neue Zürcher Newspaper expressly no amour fou: love life is neither a love story nor an erotic film. Schrader avoided "in, shall we say: female providence" the opportunity offered by the novel to film it as a voyeuristic book illustration and left out the romantic themes of desire and humiliation. While the book features drastic sex scenes, Jara's nudity in the film never becomes an end in itself. The topic is the liberation of a woman by means of a sexual outbreak. "With the unmistakable certainty of the experienced actress, Schrader (...) has cast the main role with the Israeli Netta Garti, in whose bitter beauty Jara's erotic seduction power and her soul's misery find an ideal projection surface." In social analysis, Schrader goes further than the novel: allusions "The situation of a young, guilty and overprotected generation can be felt here, who are having a hard time breaking away from their traumatized parents and grandparents generation."

Regarding the political framework, Jenny Hoch from Spiegel Online said that the fear of assassinations was present from the first scene and created a “gripping atmosphere of uncertainty”. Unfortunately, the staging sovereignty is lost, Schrader "atomizes (...) her film into a rather banal-looking series of ominous signs and one-dimensional metaphors." Schrader rarely finds the right images for the psychological introspection of the novel, and gives no convincing explanation why Jara she succumbs to the abusive aria, and Jara's change in the end is too simple in view of the complex novel. The critic spoke of a "very young and very beautiful" Netta Garti. Garti also impressed film-dienst critic Rolf-Ruediger Hamacher with a refreshing game . In addition, Schrader has a talent for leading actors. But female emancipation does not seem to have left any traces on Jara. Her relationship with Arie never seems credible, partly because the script does not develop the relationship properly, partly because the actor Šerbedžija lacks the charisma of a seducer. "So the love scenes do not exude a touch of eroticism and never let the thought arise that Jara will find any pleasure in it." Even the novel has hardly any psychological finesse, found Heike Kühn from the Frankfurter Rundschau , and build "on the will of the reader, to be entertained with tastefully arranged erotic border crossings. ”Schrader's film, which is psychologically implausible and whose end is“ nonsense ”, shows the same“ pleasure in an unreflectedly adopted victim attitude ”.

Awards

literature

conversations

  • With Maria Schrader in Welt am Sonntag , November 4, 2007, p. 75: She can be strict if she has to
  • With Zeruya Shalev in Der Tagesspiegel , November 6, 2007, p. 21: Inner Worlds

Review mirror

positive

Rather positive

Mixed

  • film-dienst No. 23/2007, p. 35, by Rolf-Ruediger Hamacher: Love life

Rather negative

negative

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e f g h Rolf-Ruediger Hamacher: Love life . In: film-dienst , No. 23/2007, p. 35
  2. ↑ a b c d Jenny Hoch: Ballad of sexual inhumanity . In: Spiegel Online , November 7, 2007
  3. ↑ a b c Heike Kühn: Bizarre Lust . In: Frankfurter Rundschau , November 8, 2007, p. 40
  4. ↑ a b c d e Anke Sterneborg: Liebesleben ( Memento of the original from October 5, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.epd-film.de 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. . In: epd Film No. 11/2007, p. 36, by
  5. ↑ a b c d e Elmar Krekeler: In love with Israel . In: Die Welt , November 7, 2007, p. 29
  6. ↑ a b c d Claudia Schwartz: Love without love . In: Neue Zürcher Zeitung , November 22, 2007, p. 51
  7. ↑ a b c Michael Althen: Always this Eros . In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung , November 10, 2007, p. 40