Parkour (film)

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Movie
Original title Parkour
Country of production Germany
original language German
Publishing year 2009
length 100 minutes
Age rating FSK 12
Rod
Director Marc Rensing
script Rüdiger Heinze ,
Marc Rensing
production Rüdiger Heinze,
Stefan Sporbert
music Thomas Mehlhorn
camera Ulli Hadding
cut Sebastian Marka
occupation

Parkour is a German feature film by Marc Rensing . The psychodrama opened on October 27, 2009 at the Hof Film Festival . The film, which was released in German cinemas on March 11, 2010, also had its world premiere there . Parkour is Marc Rensing's movie debut .

action

Richie is a sporty guy in his mid twenties. He has a lot of fun working as a scaffolding worker and loves his attractive girlfriend Hannah more than anything. In addition, Richie shares a common passion for parkour with his two best friends, Nonne and Paule .

For Richie, parkour running is both relaxation from his strenuous job and an opportunity to face challenges in the most direct way while overcoming various urban obstacles and to master them as quickly as possible. His girlfriend Hannah contrast, is doing her high school after and is in the midst of the learning stress for her final exam in mathematics . She is desperate because she has the feeling that she does not understand anything. Since Richie wants to prevent his girlfriend from studying with Stefan, a classmate from their evening school who has had an eye on her, he offers Hannah to ask his friend Nun. Because he used to be a math ace at school.

However, Richie also has his worries. His last employer still owes him wages that he has already paid to his two work colleagues Frankie and Janko. Frankie is loyalty in person and nothing can be upset that quickly. Janko is Austrian and has a problem with women, especially those who cheated on him. He also warns Richie to keep an eye on Hannah when she gets tutoring from the nun, because ultimately all women are the same.

Although Richie doesn’t really care much about Janko's talk, it doesn’t leave him alone. When he drops his girlfriend off at her school, Richie asks her what will happen when she has graduated from high school. He can't leave town, the order situation is too good for that, and with Frankie and Janko he forms a well-rehearsed team that works together successfully. Hannah puts Richie off to wait for the last exam first, then they could still see.

Richie is still unsettled and increasingly loses her balance. When he watches Hannah being harassed on the dance floor in a disco, he sees red. After Richie has secretly beaten the obtrusive disco guest in the toilet, he flees over the roofs with Nonne and Paule.

At least Hannah's tutoring sessions with Nun seem to be successful. However, Richie's pride of having helped Hannah is increasingly mixed with the fear that she might leave him after graduating from high school to move to another city to study. In addition, he becomes jealous of Nun, who now regularly spends a lot of time studying with Hannah. Richie now has completely different problems. The promised money for his last job can not be paid due to bankruptcy . Richie threatens and insults the debtor - another mistake.

Back at the construction site, Janko again tears on Richie's nerves with stories about his unfaithful ex-girlfriends. When he is supposed to hold Janko on the scaffolding, Richie loses control and lets Janko fall. Richie himself is shocked and Frankie is beside himself. Richie tells the police who show up at the construction site after Janko's serious crash that it was an accident at work . But both Frankie and Janko's friend Sylvie quickly cast doubts about Richie's version of the misfortune. Finally the police start investigations and so the noose around Richie's neck is tightening. Hannah also slowly notices that something is wrong with Richie and reacts disturbed and stunned to his unpredictable actions and uncontrolled fits of jealousy. Richie's world is getting more and more out of joint and seems to collapse on top of him. As if in a never-ending nightmare, he rushes from one uncontrollable situation to the next, and it seems like everyone and everything have conspired against him. Suddenly, Janko, who was still badly affected by his accident, appears again. He is after Richie and always wants to know from him how it came to his fall from the scaffolding.

Eventually the events roll over when Richie shows up again in the disco and is recognized as a thug. After a chase with the bouncers and the police, in which Richie is hit by a patrol car, he is taken to the police station, where a momentous misunderstanding arises, in the course of which he admits to having dropped his work colleague Janko from the scaffolding. Richie is taken into police custody for 24 hours and reacts confused and self-destructive to the situation.

After his release, Richie agrees to meet Janko again. He wants to do him a favor and find out for him what's going on behind Richie's back between Hannah, Nonne and Paule. After hearing Janko's shocked report, he finally loses his nerve. Later he was given psychiatric treatment in a regional hospital , with the possible diagnosis of a schizophrenic episode . Janko is also in the same hospital. In addition, a nurse indicates that Janko has not woken up since his accident at work, so that Richie only imagined the conversations with him.

Then Richie goes into outpatient treatment with accompanying administration of medication. However, he deliberately removes it and, physically weakened, tries a life-threatening parkour jump. The film leaves it open whether he succeeds in this or whether he has a fatal accident while jumping over the canyon.

background

production

Parkour was produced in cooperation with the SWR television series Debüt im Third and funded by the MFG Medien- und Filmgesellschaft Baden-Württemberg . The shooting began on September 2, 2008 and ended on October 13, 2008. They took place in Mannheim and the surrounding area.

publication

The film premiered on October 27, 2009 at the Hof Film Festival. It was also screened at the Solothurn Film Festival 2010, in the German Cinema section of the Berlinale 2010 and in March 2010 at the 12th Method Fest Independent Film Festival in Calabasas (California) . From March 2010 it came with a few copies in German cinemas and reached around 12,000 viewers there.

The first television broadcast as part of the series Debut in Third was on November 17, 2010 on SWR television.

Reviews

“Seldom has a German film been so bursting with energy and passion, but seldom has one recently encountered such credible tragedy in young German cinema. The consistency with which director Rensing [...] drives the story forward is remarkable. A pointed light dramaturgy and brisk cuts intensify the impression. Also thrilled that every gesture of affection is relieved of the young lovers. Nora von Waldstätten [...] does her job very well. You can literally watch Christoph Letkowski as he grows into the role of Richie. In the end, he almost reminds a little of the young Robert De Niro because of his screen presence. Parkour , this psychogram of being overwhelmed, is already one of the surprises of the film year. "

"Grippingly staged, sometimes rapidly cut and with a very keen eye for locations [...], parkour - in keeping with the trend sport of the same name - is a film full of vibrating energy. It has been a long time since a German debut film has been seen so powerfully - normally the films of a number of university graduates tend to have a certain comfort and anemia. That is certainly not the case with parkour. Marc Rensing also chooses the most popular topic of the German debut film for his film, that is, the burden of growing up, but with the help of the twist that the film makes [...] he succeeds in luring the viewer on the wrong track again and again to win surprising twists and turns in the story. If you take it very carefully, you cannot avoid criticizing a few minor dramaturgical breaks and blunders as well as a few less convincing supporting actors. Overall, however, that's more of a complaint at a very high level. Because Parkour irons out these insignificant blunders with its sheer energy, wonderful leading actors (Christoph Letkowski's transformation in the last part of the film is especially admirable) and a well-constructed story with a double bottom. "

- kino-zeit.de

“In his feature film debut, Marc Rensing relies on the spectacular sport of parkour, in which people simply leave almost insurmountable obstacles behind and move acrobatically from one place to another. Unfortunately, he does not fully exploit the optical potential that lies here and that would have made the film much more exciting, especially at the beginning. The core story of the scaffolding builder Richie also takes time to fully grasp the viewer. But when the time comes, a psychogram of a young person develops who cannot overcome his constraints as easily as the walls of houses and culminates in a courageous but grandiose ending. "

- MovieMaze

“The 35-year-old Rensing expects a lot from his audience; yes he plays with it and fools it for a long time. But the audience stays tuned. Not least because of the great will to style that this newcomer shows. The parkour of this film is actually only faced with two obstacles: on the one hand, the final twist that not every moviegoer may want to go along with. And on the other hand, the fact said that with Der Räuber a testosterone surge has just been brought into German cinema, which, however, holds out its narrative breath without a stitch. And because of the breathtaking young actor Letkowski, who literally tackles his role, so that you can still go with her when you have long since started to distance yourself. "

“The reason for Richie's conspicuously aggressive behavior is not developed from the story itself or the characters, but rather a more than simple and all the more annoying explanation is sought. His jealousy is not a purely human circumstance, it is pathological and part of a split in personality. Instead of discussing what jealousy does to people, how it develops and takes root in a society characterized by competitive pressure and the drive for success, it is labeled here as an illness and thus pressed into a narrative simple pattern. Unfortunately, the film takes any wind out of its sails. Finally you can apply the dramaturgical rules that everyone understands and that bring the plot to a closed, but boring, end. That weakens the story and the characters, and gives them a quick and understandable explanation that they don't even need. The courage for openness and subtlety could have done something here, but above all, the film remains strangely empty. "

- cut

“Nothing happens casually in Marc Rensing's Parkour , his pictures are composed down to the smallest detail. Faded colors, crude cuts, Richie's transformation is staged with the greatest care. That can be quite impressive - like the obstacle course at the beginning of the film. Sometimes it's just too much of a good thing; then you inevitably catch yourself trying to feed the plot a bit. To put a stop to the over-staging, the kitsch. "

“Rensing's idea of ​​using Le Parkour as a metaphor for the drifting apart of that conjured unity of body and mind of its protagonist also harbors the film's basic problem. Psychodrama, parkour or action film - Marc Rensing doesn’t really like to make up his mind, and he doesn’t manage to combine all the elements coherently. The trick of creating a psychogram for Richie's by means of parkour sport is only approximately successful here.

Achieving the 'flow' of parkour, i.e. the smoothest and most fluid movement possible, is another challenge that every film is confronted with. More than other productions, Parkour makes this task a guiding concept and thus takes on an obstacle that it cannot overcome in the end. "

- Critic.de

“Marc Rensing's feature film debut Parkour shows unadorned German mentalities. From the life of the hard-working, broke, because pseudo-self-employed proletarian to the semi-intellectual white-collar middle-class. The two meet at a party: “What are you doing? Construction? I can't do that, get up so early «. Richie's counterpart is more of a head person. And small talk fanatics. A world to go crazy in. And that's what Richie does little by little, who should blame him? The pressure to perform and the constantly repeated warnings from his construction colleague Janko not to let Hannah cheat, make Richie go nuts. He lets Janko fall from the scaffolding, spies on his girlfriend, always imagining new affairs. A vortex of failure and fear of loss, jealousy and stress at work makes him a paranoid, frenzied, loss of control Woyzeck of the new millennium. "

"Rensing clearly plays with famous motifs from the 'Othello' tragedy by William Shakespeare, right up to the figure of the gloomy, scheming whisperer Janko, whose name is by no means reminiscent of the ensign Iago from 'Othello'. In the play as in the film, jealousy turns an upstart who loves a woman from a higher social class into a helpless wreck. Friend and foe become indistinguishable. The parallel tour of the sports parkour and love was intended, so Rensing. He would have watched Orson Welles' film adaptation of Othello several times , but also The Hell by Claude Chabrol, in which psychosis and delusional relationships play a major role: strong heroes, weak feelings. "

Awards

Knut Elstermann (moderation), Marc Rensing and Michael Verhoeven (sole juror of the MFG-Star Baden-Baden 2009) will discuss
parkour at the Baden-Baden 2009 TV Film Festival .

Marc Rensing received the Eastman Prize for Young Talent at the Hof Film Festival in 2009 for his film and its direction . Furthermore, Marc Rensing was awarded the MFG-Star Baden-Baden in 2009. Also in 2009, the film received the rating of "particularly valuable" from the German Film and Media Assessment (FBW) .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Certificate of Release for Parkour . Voluntary self-regulation of the film industry , December 2009 (PDF; test number: 120 904 K).
  2. a b Start dates  ( page no longer available , search in web archivesInfo: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. according to the Internet Movie Database@1@ 2Template: Dead Link / www.imdb.de  
  3. a b c Parkour. In: filmportal.de . German Film Institute , accessed on September 19, 2017 .
  4. Berlinale German Cinema 2010: Parkour ( Memento of the original from October 9, 2015 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. , accessed May 21, 2011 @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.berlinale.de
  5. The 2010 Method Fest ... lists of nominees , accessed on May 21, 2011
  6. Parkour at Blickpunkt: Film , accessed on May 21, 2011
  7. Wilfried Geldner: The SWR celebrates from November 10th "25 years debut in the third" , accessed on May 21, 2011
  8. ^ Matthias von Viereck: Full of energy and passion. Hamburger Abendblatt , accessed on March 19, 2010 .
  9. Joachim Kurz: Make the jump. kino-zeit.de, accessed on March 18, 2010 .
  10. Markus Ostertag: Parkour. MovieMaze, accessed March 18, 2010 .
  11. Peter Zander: Marc Rensing's furious "Parkour" run - a film on extreme sports. Die Welt , accessed on March 18, 2010 .
  12. Susan Noll: Human Abysses. Cut , accessed March 19, 2010.
  13. Julia Amalia Heyer: Jealousy is unhealthy. ( Memento of the original of March 22, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The 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. Süddeutsche Zeitung from March 19, 2010 @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.sueddeutsche.de
  14. ^ Tim Geyer: Parkour. Retrieved March 19, 2010
  15. Elsa Köster: Woyzeck Superhero - Getting up early is not enough: In the movie "Parkour" everyday proletarian life leads to madness. Retrieved March 28, 2010
  16. Günter Moseler: Jealous drama “Parkour” packs in the cinema.  ( Page no longer available , search in web archivesInfo: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Retrieved May 17, 2010@1@ 2Template: Toter Link / www.muensterschezeitung.de  
  17. Nominations and awards according to the Internet Movie Database
  18. ^ German Film and Media Assessment (FBW): Parkour , accessed on March 19, 2010