Small World (film)

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Movie
German title Small World
Original title Je n'ai rien oublié
Country of production France , Germany
original language French
Publishing year 2010
length 93 minutes
Age rating FSK 6
JMK 10
Rod
Director Bruno Chiche
script Bruno Chiche
production Nicolas Duval-Adassovsky
Yann Zenou
music Klaus Badelt
Jean-Michel Bernard
camera Thomas Hardmeier
cut Marion Monnier
occupation

Small World is a German-French film adaptation of the bestseller of the same name (see Small World ) by Martin Suter from 2010.

action

Konrad Lang is a free spirit who suffers from memory disorders. Memories of his childhood are closer to him than the past day. After carelessly setting fire to a lock that he had lived in as a manager, Elvira Senn invites him to live in the estate of the industrial family Senn. In this family, the young Konrad, son of a domestic servant, had grown up with Thomas, the son of the family, like a brother, after his mother, the domestic servant, had left him behind at a young age. Later, however, there was a falling out between Konrad and Thomas.

Thomas reacts rather coolly to Konrad's reappearance. Thomas' stepmother Elvira Senn, who had supported the industrialist Senn in his upbringing after the death of his wife and who eventually married him, is rather benevolent towards Konrad and his dementia-related dropouts. She also finds it forgivable that he set fire to the family's other property. Simone, the young wife of Thomas' son Philippe, is curious about the strange Konrad. She is bored in the castle because her husband travels a lot for work, and is spending more and more time with Konrad.

Since Philippe and Simone's wedding was only a short time ago, Philippe's mother, Thomas' still-wife Elisabeth, is visiting from Boston. The old love between Konrad and her briefly flares up again. After Konrad slept in the snow outside in a disoriented state, Simone finds him and is taken to the hospital. Here three frozen toes are removed from him and he is also tested for dementia . The extent of his illness becomes clear. Finally, Konrad falls from the hospital roof when he is rocking in his chair listening to music and loses his balance. However, he does not injure himself because of a rescue cushion. It becomes clear that he does not understand what actually happened.

Elvira insists on taking him into the guest house of her castle, where Simone and the nurse Nadia take care of him more and more intensively. The doctor recommends that Konrad look at old photos that Simone eventually stole from Elvira from a secret hiding place and copied. With the help of the photos Konrad remembers his earliest childhood. Simone becomes aware of contradictions in the family's stories.

Simone watches in the café how her husband is tender with another woman. Shortly thereafter, she finds out that she is pregnant. When her husband brings her a present, she expresses her suspicions, but without revealing her observation or her pregnancy. He reacts irritated and angry that she doubts the meaning of the marriage even more. She eventually leaves Philippe.

Elvira fears that Konrad's memories could reveal her secrets, which is why she wants to kill him with insulin. Thomas can prevent this at the last moment. He too saw the photos and realized that he is Elvira's biological son. She finally drives from the property and on the way confesses to the chauffeur that the children have been swapped: She had a son at the age of 16, but she kept him from the industrialist Senner. She passed him off as the son of another employee who eventually left the country. Because she suffered from her marriage to Senn, she eventually murdered him by injecting him with insulin. In flashbacks it was already clear that Konrad had seen this. In order to protect her son from poverty, she exchanged his name and identity with those of Senn's son on a long trip to Venice. So your real son Konrad had grown up rich when Thomas was with the family. Thus the supposed Konrad was in truth Thomas, the biological son of the industrialist Senn. Elvira dies in the car, probably from a self-administered insulin overdose. In the final scene, Elvira's funeral, (the supposed) Konrad puzzles over her whereabouts.

Reviews

In Die Zeit , Rafael Dernbach criticizes the fact that the director of a “nifty crime thriller about an Alzheimer's patient” only leaves a “discouraged family drama”. At the same time, however, he praised the acting performance of Depardieu, who at “no time” played Konrad as a “pitiful patient”. However, it remains incomprehensible “why, of all things, a picture-loaded template like Small World is not used on film”.

Lida Bach, on the other hand, states on filmrezension.de: “ Bruno Chiche stages Martin Suter's criminal drama 'Small World' in the cool elegance of a romantic ballad . Subtle metaphors lurk everywhere in the painterly gloom of Chiches scene paintings. The atmosphere in the spacious mansion is as frosty as the winter landscape. Love freezes to death in the elegant cold like the three of Konrad's toes after he trudges absently through the white. It's good that seven is his lucky number, smiles the wonderful Konrad - senile? Knowing? 'Sometimes I think you're just playing,' not only his nurse suspects. Depardieus Konrad Lang is a brilliant dream dancer who has been lost to the world. No longer the tragic main character from Suter's novella, but his sleepwalking soul brother. "

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

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Age rating for Small World . Youth Media Commission .
  2. ↑ Rafael Dernbach: The clarity in forgetting . The time . Retrieved March 18, 2013
  3. ↑ Lida Bach Small World - Bruno Chiche sends Gérard Depardieu in Martin Suter's dangerous "Small World" filmrezension.de. Accessed on March 18, 2013