Sixteen Tones (film)
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| Original title | Sixteen-ten |
| Country of production | Germany |
| original language | German |
| Publishing year | 2012 |
| length | 90 minutes |
| Rod | |
| Director | Hendrik Handloegten |
| script | Hendrik Handloegten, Achim von Borries |
| production | Jörg Himstedt |
| music | Bertram Denzel |
| camera | Philipp Haberlandt |
| cut | Stefan Blue |
| occupation | |
| |
Sechzehneichen is a German TV film from 2012 . The film is a mixture of drama , crime , thriller , horror film and is based on the motifs of the novel The Women of Stepford .
action
Laura is happy with her husband Nils and their daughter Fanny. But the bad air in Frankfurt am Main troubles her. She gets coughing fits that lead to severe allergic reactions. To mitigate this, the family decides to move to the country. You are buying a house in sixteen. This “ gated community ” offers everything a young family could wish for: security, architectural houses and wonderful neighbors. While Nils immediately befriends the neighbors and quickly finds great pleasure in their lifestyle, Laura remains distant and suspects that some things are strange. And she will be proved right.
Plot (detailed)
At the beginning of the film, the father of the family Nils Eichhorn is questioned in an implied interrogation and states that he loves his wife and daughter more than anything. When the unknown questioner asked where the two of them were, he replied: “I don't know.” During the course of the film, further sequences of this interrogation are shown, in which backgrounds, such as B. Former photographer activities of Nils' wife and the non-received prize at a presentation are explained.
The wealthy Eichhorn family, consisting of Nils, Laura and their daughter Fanny, are on their way to view the house in the gated community “Sechzehneichen”. Because Laura got an allergy in the big city and the people there - according to Nils - are selfish (they would not have helped Laura in the city when she fell to the ground because of a seizure), he wants to move with his family to the rural area. The settlement comprises 20 detached houses of different architectural styles, the Eichhorns are supposed to visit the newest one. During the tour with the estate's own omnibus, the broker Konstantin Wendisch asks the family man if he would be interested in politics and tells him that the community has a representative in the district.
The Eichhorns move in and are immediately integrated by the other residents: their neighbor Ludwig organizes a welcome party for them with his neighbors, Ansgar and Marlene. Laura and Nils initially wonder why he does this without asking Ansgar and Marlene beforehand. Ludwig appeases the couple, their neighbors would be happy. The Sechzehneichener gave the Eichhorns a framed picture (“The dream of bathing in the fountain of youth” by Lucas Cranach the Elder ) as a welcome gift.
One day after shopping, Laura accidentally crashes into Tim, a youth from the settlement, in the shopping cart. She then brings him to his home and arranges to meet him for tennis. At the welcome party, Nils and Laura Ansgar, Marlene and Valerie get to know the wife of the real estate agent Konstantin. Laura converses politely with everyone and explores the facility. She notices the same painting on a wall in the living room that she and her husband were given. In the course of the evening, Marlene and Valerie talk about their health problems and the doctor Dr. Ludwig Lindenfels, who prescribes an individual drug ("globules") for each of his patients. These are globulins and everything is ecological. Laura asks about another picture in the house that shows the city of Nuremberg and asks how Marlene relates to the picture. Marlene then starts crying because she has no answer to this question and hurries away.
Meanwhile, Nils is sitting with the other cigar-smoking husbands in a library room with a fireplace. You point out to Nils an interesting documentary about a quarter past 12 on the arte channel about the early 1960s. At home, Laura expresses her impressions of the celebration and the guests and meets with incomprehension from Nils, who dismisses everything with superficiality and coincidence. Later, alone in front of the television, Nils notices how another film is being shown instead of the arte program. You can see at least three men sexually tampering with Marlene, while she looks directly into the camera. The next day, Valerie's little deaf son Simon disappears. Together with his speech therapist, Marlene asks Laura to help them search. The boy's bike is found by the security service, and Marlene bursts into tears at the sight of it; Laura and the speech therapist continue looking alone. They find a hole in the fence and then also Simon in a playground outside the area, where he and two other children hid from the rain. When the speech therapist asked to come out, he shook his head.
Nils is angry because Laura left her daughter alone and decides to go alone to the meeting called by the community about Simon's disappearance. There he criticized the carelessness of the security service and received approving applause for his suggestion to hire another company. After Ludwig drove him home, Nils asks what the porn film is all about, which he apparently got onto the television. Ludwig pretends not to know anything about it and continues to an event in the “men's club”. At home, Nils zaps through the programs and sees another leaked film in which Ludwig, Konstantin and Ansgar are obviously performing breast augmentation on Valerie in an operating room.
As the film progresses, Tim tells Laura about a recurring nightmare while playing tennis. In it he rides his bicycle through the sixteen oak grounds while the bodies of all the other residents are lying around and he is the only one who is still alive.
Nils wants to speak to Ludwig, the doctor, and meets a veiled woman in the waiting room of the settlement clinic, who turns him on with her eyes and gives him a business card. She goes into the treatment room, whereupon Nils is told that the doctor cannot see him because of complications. The woman is obviously a prostitute. At home, Laura notices that her husband is distancing himself from her and she promises him, believing it is her fault, to change. Nils doesn't want to go to sleep with her because he's still waiting for a call. After the phone call, he drives to a video-monitored ice rink and is confronted with the woman from the waiting room. On the ice surface, which is only illuminated in the center, Nils becomes intimate with the woman, and applause suddenly sounds from the shadows around him. These are the men of the settlement who are now demanding a decision from Nils: If he wants to "belong", he must make his wife docile. Nils replies that he loves his wife and later tries to sleep with Laura. She pushes him away without a word, convinced that he has slept with another woman.
Laura's sister Ella comes to visit for a day during which they both talk about the past. The next day, Nils lures Ella into an ambush in the club hall, where they meet Ludwig, Konstantin and Ansgar. Everything indicates that Ella should now be made "compliant" as a replacement for Laura. At home, Nils makes almost all of Ella's belongings disappear, but Laura becomes suspicious when she cannot reach her sister and finds some of her personal belongings. Just as she is starting to accuse Nils, the phone rings. It is Ella, who in a very dazed voice (apparently under drugs) tells Laura that she had met a "great guy" and could not have said goodbye. She was sorry she had to break up now. In a panic, Laura believes her sister and apologizes to the understanding Nils after the phone call.
Laura has made portraits of the residents of Sechzehneichen and exhibits them in the club hall. There she also meets Tim, who tells her that the other people are going to kill Laura. While her husband is giving a welcoming speech for Laura, her sister appears staggering in a black evening dress and red stole. She hugs Ludwig and kisses him lasciviously. The photo show begins and Laura becomes increasingly nervous. She takes Nils' hand, but he lets go of her after a short time. Laura realizes that nobody really cares about the pictures and is even more humiliated when everyone applauds. The highlight of the evening is the award of the prize in the form of a rare daguerreotype depicting the philosopher Friedrich Wilhelm Schelling . This is exactly the price that Laura was denied during her time as an active photographer. She is circled by the guests who take their place around the stage and faints; she wakes up in an infirmary. There are Nils and Ludwig who want to give her a drug to "calm down" her. Laura jumps up and flees the hospital ward. After hiding for a while, Laura returns to the house to fetch her daughter, who is being looked after by Valerie. Nils hears screams and locks the door to prevent Laura's escape. In an argument, Nils knocks Laura to the ground and drags her down the stairs. She wakes up, kicks him down and, after a fight in the kitchen, escapes with him outside onto the flat roof. There she threatens Nils with a knife that he shouldn't come any closer. He pushes her off the roof and she falls. Meanwhile, Tim, who appears in front of the house, calls the emergency doctor on his mobile phone.
Now the interrogation room is shown, in which Nils is sitting and has finished his testimony. A lawyer stands next to Laura behind a glass pane and calms her down. She asks him what will happen to Nils and tells the lawyer that "he" wanted to kill her. He pushes his business card into her hand and says her husband “won't be out soon”. Laura wants to see her daughter, and the lawyer escorts her to the elevator. There Laura noticed the lawyer's surname on the business card: "Wendisch" - he seems to be related to the realtor (Konstantin Wendisch). She realizes that he too is part of the conspiracy. When she arrives in the underground car park, the settlement's own black minivan with the sixteen-oak logo is there. When the doors open, Fanny can be seen buckled up. Laura gets in the car and they drive away. The last scene shows Laura in a chic dress and Fanny walking through the gate of the settlement while Nils walks towards them. Laura was apparently made compliant with drugs in order to be able to live with her husband. They all walk hand in hand “happily” towards the sixteen oak housing estate as the barriers close behind them.
background
The film was shot from September 26th to November 2nd 2011 in Frankfurt am Main and the surrounding area. The premiere was on June 30, 2012 as part of the New German Television series at the Munich Film Festival . Then Sechzehneichen ran in the international series at the Filmfest Oldenburg 2012. The first broadcast was on November 28, 2012 in the ARD series Film Wednesday in the first . The film was seen by 5.01 million viewers, which corresponds to a market share of 15.7 percent.
Reviews
"An idiosyncratic television film that denounces the bundling of men with a variety of different stylistic devices and draws the claustrophobic atmosphere of a world that is built on female subservience and mechanisms of oppression."
“With a wonderfully distinguished ensemble and the stylistically strict cameraman Philipp Haberlandt, director Hendrik Handloegten creates a mood that is charged in every respect, which is also reminiscent of cult films from the sixties. […] The deciphering of film quotations is just an aesthetic gimmick that makes the vicious, time-critical core of the film more bearable for those who are sociologically held up in a mirror with the surreal thriller. However, the television catharsis could fail, although the television film is optically characterized by cinema quality. Because this well-educated, culturally interested 'New Center' likes to throw a movie picture on the concrete wall in their low-energy houses, but at most only watches Arte on television. "
“'Sechzehneichen' is the next trick by director Hendrik Handloegten […], who also wrote the script for this nasty, stylistically outstanding mix of genres together with Achim von Borries […]. It's about the horror of a closed, encapsulated world. [...] So a horror film. But one who disguises itself as a crime thriller at the beginning. "
Awards
Heike Makatsch was nominated for the Hessian TV Prize 2012 for her leading role in Sechzehneichen as “Best Actress” .
Web links
- Sixteen oaks in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- Sechzehneichen at filmportal.de
- Sechzehneichen on ard.de
Individual evidence
- ↑ Sixteen niches at crew united . Retrieved January 11, 2017.
- ↑ Sixteen-nineteen. In: filmportal.de . German Film Institute , accessed on September 23, 2016 .
- ↑ Sechzehneichen , 19th Internationales Filmfest Oldenburg, accessed on December 13, 2012
- ^ Disturbing ARD film: Thriller “Sechzehneichen” a success with ratings , express.de from November 29, 2012
- ↑ Sixteen niches. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed December 13, 2012 .
- ^ Klaudia Wick: ARD-Film: Closed Society , berliner-zeitung.de of November 27, 2012
- ↑ Thomas Gehringer: Heike Makatsch in the horror settlement , tagesspiegel.de of November 28, 2012
- ^ "The Elsner Riddle" ensures glamor , FAZ.NET of October 13, 2012