Sehnsucht/Longing - Film Saturday in Leipzig

A perfect relationship, as all would think... Eine perfekte Beziehung, so stellen sich alles das vor...
Yet fate pulls them apart /Doch das Schicksal reisst sie auseinander...
Ein Mann und eine Frau leben in einem Dorf in der Nähe von Berlin. DieStadt scheint weit weg zu sein. Sie lieben sich seit Kinderzeiten. Unzertrennlich.Beide sind nun Ende zwanzig. Er ist Schlosser und Mitglied der freiwilligenFeuerwehr. Sie arbeitet ein paar Stunden in der Woche als Haushaltshilfeund singt im Chor. Von anderen werden sie staunend und misstrauischbeäugt, da sie so glücklich scheinen, unangetastet von den Reibereien desAlltags. Unschuldig und manchmal ahnungslos wie zwei Kinder. Als derMann eines Tages mit der Feuerwehr auf eine Dienstreise in eine größereStadt geht, wacht er nach einer durchzechten Nacht in der Wohnung einerfremden Frau auf und kann sich nur an wenig erinnern. Als er versuchtherauszufinden, was geschehen ist, ist das der Anfang einer leidenschaftlichenAffäre... Der erste abendfüllende Spielfilm von Valeska Grisebach erzählt eine ungewöhnlicheLiebesgeschichte, deren melodramatische und märchenhafteAnklänge sich in einer realistischen, manchmal dokumentarisch anmutendenWeise spiegeln. Der Konzeption vorausgegangen sind ausgiebigeVideo-Recherchen über die Lebenswirklichkeit und private Befindlichkeitvon 30-Jährigen im Raum Berlin-Brandenburg. Aus diesem Material hatValeska Grisebach ihre Geschichte und die Figuren destilliert.


“A husband and wife live in a village close to Berlin, but the city seems far away. They have been in love since childhood, inseparable and going on 30 yrs. Old. He is a locksmith and in the volunteer fire department. She works a few hours a week cleaning houses and sings in a choir. Others in the village are amazed and look suspiciously at this pair, since they seem to be so happy and untouched by the normal problems of daily life. They seem innocent and unsuspecting like two children. When the husband, Markus, has to go on a longer assignment with the fire department in a bigger city, he wakes up after a night of wild celebrating in the apartment of a woman he doesn’t know and cannot remember anything. When he tries to find out what happened, a passionate affair ensues…
This first longer film from Valeska Grisebach tells an unusual love story, whose melodramatic and fairy-tale-like resonance it mirrored in a realistic almost documentary style. This concept and film was preceded by thorough video research on the reality of daily life personal fears and anxiety of people about 30 years old in the area around Berlin. Valeska Grisebach distilled her story and dramatic figures from this material.”

This evening I went to the movies at the Cinemathéque in der NaTo. This is an excellent film that creates tension and story line without the help of a soundtrack, i.e. without music composed as a background for the action and emotions. My experiences in small towns in Brandenburg (I have never woken up anywhere I didn’t plan to… though) are in line with these scenes – the public scenes, that is – depicted in this film. You are in small town East Germany Brandenburg in this film and you feel so sorry for this husband and wife. Yet one also wonders where the close friends of Markus were to help him process his problems and work them out. Fate can sometimes seem to block out the possibility of stepping in and stopping the spiral to turn things around. While the USA may be the land of the new beginning and the frontier mentality, much of the rest of the world sees fate and your position in life and society as forces one cannot battle with, and these motifs also play a role in this film. This could be a real story, and this is a film with no hero and no villain, as it often is in real life. This is from Rommel Films and was produced in 2006. Der Film ist sicher überall in Deutschland zu sehen, in Leipzig in der Cinematheque NaTo. I do not know if the film is available with English subtitles or in a dubbed version. Can someone find out?