Time of secrets
| Television series | |
|---|---|
| German title | Time of secrets |
| Country of production | Germany |
| original language | German |
| year | 2019 |
| Production company |
Netflix Studios Summer Home film production Proton Cinema |
| length | 34-42 minutes |
| Episodes | 3 in 1 season ( list ) |
| genre | drama |
| Director | Samira Radsi |
| idea | Katharina Eyssen |
| script | Katharina Eyssen |
| production | Jochen Laube & Fabian Maubach |
| music | Annette Focks |
First publication in German |
November 20, 2019 on Netflix |
| occupation | |
Time of Secrets is a German drama - Miniseries by Katharina Eyssen that on 20 November 2019 Netflix has been released. The story, which takes place over three decades, is about women from four generations of a family who live in a house on a North Sea coast . The central point is the return of individual women for Christmas .
background
In October 2018, Netflix announced five German in-house productions, including an as-yet-unnamed three-part Christmas miniseries. The title Time of Secrets and the main cast were announced in May 2019 after filming in Croatia and Denmark was completed . A trailer was released on November 6th, and November 20, 2019 was given as the release date. On that day, the three episodes appeared in a row. The German series is based on a Spanish Netflix production by Pau Freixas called Three Days of Christmas (original title Días de Navidad ), which only appeared after the time of secrets in December 2019.
action
1989
Because her mother Alma is slowly becoming demented, Eva has hired the Eastern European Ljubica to help her in the house. Eva's daughter Sonja returns from her studies for Christmas and brings her new friend Peter with her. Sonja had actually studied law, but switched to political science because of Peter and is now saying that Germany needs a revolution. You are planning to go to Colombia. Eva's husband and Sonja's father Olaf has only stayed in the house for years due to migraines and keeps all doors and windows locked so that nothing that makes things sick can come in.
Alma sees a report on television about an assassination attempt by the Red Army faction , whose mastermind Peter Weiland is said to be. After wandering around in the dunes where Sonja found her, Olaf wants to have Alma brought to a home after the holidays. Alma tells Sonja how, when her husband Alfred was deported, she and Eva arrived at the coastal house and took a pistol from a Russian, which she kept and shows Sonja. Sonja reveals to her father that she is pregnant, who tells her how her little brother died after carrying him outside when she was three years old. Eva gives Sonja a bracelet that Alma had owned, and Sonja in turn gives her Alma's pistol.
Alma shows Eva and Ljubica the TV report about Peter Weiland, which they try to hide from Olaf. During Christmas dinner, the police storm the house and arrest Peter for attempted murder and membership in a terrorist organization, and Sonja for complicity in believing that Eva called the police. Eva in turn accuses Alma, but when Olaf admits that it was him, Eva shoots him. She buries him with Ljubica in the dunes. Eva can finally open the windows of the house.
2004
Sonja's daughters Vivi and Lara live with Eva and Ljubica in the coastal house. When they visit Olaf's grave, Eva claims he drowned in the sea. Vivi and Lara find a letter from Peter to Sonja, which they hide in a tree trunk in the dunes. Vivi believes her father Peter was a musician, which she wants to be, and died in a car accident. For Christmas Sonja comes from Ibiza with her new partner Juliana. In an argument with her mother, Sonja threatens that she would rather go to a hotel, whereupon Vivi begs her not to leave her again. Vivi's friend Anton visits her for consolation and gives her walkie-talkies, after which they kiss. During the night Sonja suggests to Vivi that she should come secretly to Ibiza and that they would fetch Lara later; Vivi wants to wait until the next day. After the presents, when Sonja gave Vivi a guitar, Sonja announced to Eva that she wanted to take Vivi with her, but Eva strictly refused, whereupon Sonja accused her of calling the police at the time and that she was weak because she was have not left her husband. Eva throws Sonja out of the house, who leaves it in a taxi, which Vivi runs after.
2019
One after the other, Vivi, Lara, their boyfriend Moritz and Sonja arrive at the house and hear from Ljubica that Eva is dead because she is lying in bed and is no longer breathing, but then Eva suddenly stands in the doorway. When the doctor Hans, a former friend of Sonja, examines her, the women refuse to take Eva to the hospital because she would not want to leave the house. Sonja reports that she is going through the Alcoholics Anonymous twelve-step program ; Lara and Moritz, whose family runs a tennis club, that they are getting married, and Vivi that they have a record deal. When Vivi is sitting with Eva at night, she says that they have to know her secret before she dies.
In the morning Vivi sees in the bathroom that Lara is taking Diazepam and believes that her sister has panic attacks because she doesn't actually want to marry Moritz. To celebrate the day before Christmas, Vivi's former boyfriend Anton appears with his new girlfriend Jenny. There is a report on television that Peter Weiland has been released from prison, through which Vivi learns that her father did not die in a car accident, but was a terrorist. Sonja escapes the conversation with her daughter by running to the dunes. Vivi withdraws to the attic, where Anton visits her and they sleep together. Lara tells Moritz that she sometimes feels like the only normal person in the family, which leads him to believe that she is only with him to be on the safe side.
At Christmas, Peter Weiland, whom Moritz let in, suddenly appears in the house because he didn't know where else to go. He knows Vivi from photos and letters that Eva had sent him. Sonja and Ljubica tell him to go, while Vivi wants him to stay. After an argument with Lara, who is fed up with her family, which is why he is not allowed to call them crazy, Moritz wants to leave. But he comes back because there is no longer a bus. Eva tells Sonja, Vivi and Lara that they have to find their hiding place, so they look in the dunes and old bunkers, where they argue and Vivi accuses Sonja of abandoning her children, who then explains why she left again in 2004 was. Vivi confesses that she doesn't have a record deal and that her demo tape has been rejected. Finally they find the pistol with which they confront Ljubica in the tree trunk in the dunes. She shows them a sack with the remains of Olaf from a hiding place in the attic and tells them that Eva shot and buried her husband. But two years ago, when the dunes became a nature reserve, Ljubica had to dig it up again and hide it somewhere else. Meanwhile, Eva died after all. At dinner Peter leaves the house and tells Vivi that since he cannot have children, he is not her father, which also surprises Sonja. She concludes that Hans is Vivi's father.
Ljubica wants Sonja to stay in the house and live with her instead of going back to Juliana in Ibiza; Sonja suggests she could stay for a few weeks for now. In the presence of Vivi, Lara and Ljubica, Sonja scattered Eva's ashes in the sea in front of the house.
Episode list
| No. | Original title | Director | script | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Welcome Home | Samira Radsi | Katharina Eyssen | |
| In different decades Sonja comes home for Christmas. | ||||
| 2 | Sonja's secret | Samira Radsi | Katharina Eyssen | |
| Vivi learns through a TV report that her father Peter was a terrorist. | ||||
| 3 | Eva's secret | Samira Radsi | Katharina Eyssen | |
| Sonja, Vivi and Lara learn from Ljubica that Eva killed her husband Olaf. | ||||
| All episodes were released worldwide on November 20, 2019 on Netflix . | ||||
occupation
| role | description | actor | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1989 | 2004 | 2019 | ||
| Women of the family | ||||
| Alma | Eva's mother | Barbara Nuts 1 | ||
| Eve | Alma's daughter | Corinna Harfouch 2 | ||
| Sonja | Eva's daughter | Emilie Neumeister | Christiane Paul | |
| Vivi | Sonja's daughters | Lorna to Solms | Svenja Jung | |
| Lara | Tilda Jenkins | Leonie Benesch | ||
| Ljubica | Home help | Laura von Beloseroff | Anita Vulesica | |
| Minor characters | ||||
| Olaf | Eva's husband, Sonja's father | Hans-Uwe Bauer | ||
| Anton | Vivi's friend, cop | Ludwig Senger | Golo Euler | |
| Moritz | Lara's fiance | Dennis Herrmann | ||
| Hans | Sonja's friend, doctor | Matti Schmidt-Schaller | Maik Solbach | |
| Peter | Sonja's friend, RAF terrorist | Merlin Rose | Michael Fitz 3 | |
| Juliana | Sonja's partner | Eva Bay | ||
| Walter | Delivery man, Ljubica's crush | Lucas Lentes | Thilo Prothmann | |
| Jenny | Anton's girlfriend | Josefine Voss | ||
| Bettina | Anton's mother | Esther Esche | ||
reception
Gian-Philip Andreas from fernsehserien.de reviews that the three-part series is rather a “typical, admittedly high-quality TV film in pre-adventurous cinema mode,” which, unlike the other German Netflix productions, tends to attract the 45+ generation. The story presents itself as a remix of common melodrama set pieces with numerous types of characters that one has seen so similarly many times before, and piles up the slogging motifs and standards of conventional under-every-roof-one-oh-a-way dramaturgies. From the top line-up, with whom the bar for German television dramas is easily skipped, he praises Christiane Paul as Sonja, who, as the hinge figure between her mother and her daughters, ensures the most touching moments and becomes the most exciting figure in the story, and Corinna Harfouch as Eva, who succeeds "in her mostly dangerously controlled, almost minimalist, sometimes harsh, sometimes mocking game to make visible all the pain that has accumulated in Eva's life."
Sidney Schering writes for quotenmeter.de that the series draws a difficult but multi-faceted picture of the family and demonstrates that family is difficult: “Somehow you stick together and pass on your ticks to those around you, but you also delay animosity and hurt yourself Little things, let alone with big gestures, the motives of which cannot be revealed. ”The introduction is a bit bumpy, but director Samira Radsi stages the small, interpersonal family gestures with sober calm and poetic sensitivity and the ensemble cast is much more delicate than her first scenes suggest. Schering's conclusion is: "It remains a successful Christmas miniseries, which also takes a big step towards the representation of women in German series."
For the FAZ , Oliver Junge writes that ARD and ZDF are teaching Time of Secrets and that it shows what level the little fiction can reach if you give it enough freedom, it is definitely a genuine German television film, but so enchanting that you can would rub his eyes. He raves about the cast: “Corinna Harfouch gives her figure a stooped size, a vibrating opacity that enters a wrestling match over many rounds with Sonja's daring defenselessness. The acting performance of Jung and Benesch keeps up in this class. How the daughters redirect inner disability into anger, cynicism and fear, while remaining childlike in need of love, that seems highly authentic. All dialogues between the women have an immediacy and impact, as if they had been improvised on the set. ”Therefore, the viewer understands the fascination of the male characters for this house of crazy women, with whom you have to fall in love all together. For boys, Time of Secrets is the favorite in the race for the (pre-) Christmas film of hearts 2019.
Claudia Tieschky for the Süddeutsche Zeitung sees in the miniseries the special Christmas mixture of feelings of great, sentimental longing for the family and real failure because of this longing, which becomes palatable through a dramatic family saga. "And extraordinary, because it is all about the women of this family, this raging love and deeply hurtful repulsion between mother and daughter over four generations, you know that, but it is told far too rarely." The dramas have more effect on the daughters as a life further and only between mothers and daughters there is support that men do not offer. For Tieschky, Time of Secrets seems to have been composed from the imagery of various women's magazines and repeatedly crosses the border to equipment and feel-good kitsch.
Web links
- Time of the secrets in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- Time of secrets at Fernsehserien.de
Individual evidence
- ↑ Bernd Krannich: Netflix confirms five more German in-house productions between history and future . In: fernsehserien.de . October 25, 2018. Retrieved June 26, 2020.
- ↑ Bernd Krannich: Netflix reveals "Time of Secrets" as a German in-house production . In: fernsehserien.de . May 10, 2019. Accessed June 26, 2020.
- ↑ Glenn Riedmeier: "Time of Secrets": Netflix Christmas series starts in November . In: fernsehserien.de . November 6, 2019. Accessed June 26, 2020.
- ^ A b Gian-Philip Andreas: “Time of Secrets”: Top-filled Christmas noble soap attracts completely new Netflix target groups - Review . In: fernsehserien.de . November 20, 2019. Accessed June 26, 2020.
- ↑ Sidney Schering: "Time of Secrets": A German Netflix Christmas story . In: quotenmeter.de . November 20, 2019. Accessed June 26, 2020.
- ↑ Oliver Junge: House of Women . In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung . November 20, 2019. Accessed June 26, 2020.
- ↑ claudia Tieschky: Heavy wool sweaters . In: Süddeutsche Zeitung . November 20, 2019. Accessed June 26, 2020.