It’s almost impossible to go into a DVD store in Germany,
even in Saturn’s vast stores, and find any thing other than American films
dubbed into German. But as luck would have it I found an interesting movie that
was made and filmed there and had ‘Englisch untertitels’. Was Bleibt (2012) has only
been shown in the UK at the 2012 Cambridge Film Festival under the title Home for the Weekend, although the
direct German translation is I believe What
Remains which depicts this story of a fractured upper middle class family
far better than the American title.
The first person we meet is Marko, who is in his
mid-thirties and has had his first book published, he lives in Berlin with his
wife and young son Zowie. But it would appear that his marriage is going
through a transitional period. He visits the affluent Gitte and Günter for a
family weekend taking along their grandchild. Marko’s younger brother Jakob
lives not far from his parents. His dentist business and the building of his
house have been partly financed by his father. The gathering is to celebrate
the sale of Günter’s publishing business, which means that he can look forward
to a comfortable retirement with his wife. This planned family get-together
begins to unravel when Gitte, who has been mentally unstable since the boys
were children, announces that for the first time in a very long time she is
coming off her medication and hopes she can now be treated like an ordinary
member of the family instead of them tiptoeing around her and treating her with
kid gloves. This announcement does not receive the response she expected and
sparks unsuspecting repercussions and rocks the thin veneer of family
respectability.
Hans-Christian Schmid has directed a restrained, sensitive
and meaningful drama that was a hit on the festival circuit but will probably
never have a general release in the UK. This is a real shame and as one critic
remarked if it was an American Independent movie with a bankable cast it would
have no problem getting seen. This beautifully photographed and polished movie
offers some fine acting especially from Lars Eldinger who plays Marko. The only
actor in this European drama that you may be familiar with is Corinna Harfouch
who plays Gitte Heidtmann. You may remember she played Magda Goebbels who
sacrificed her children for the Third Reich in Oliver Hirschbiegels Downfall (2004) the film that depicted
the final days of Adolf Hitler. Also she appeared in Atomised (2006) and 2008’s Perfume:
The Story of a Murderer.
Corinna Harfouch. |
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