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Netflix drama "Seitenwechsel" with Ruth Negga and Tessa Thompson: The Oscar season has started

2021-11-11T18:38:13.151Z


Two black women lived as whites in New York in the 1920s. Ruth Negga and Tessa Thompson enter the Oscar race with this drama. What makes this film so great?


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Clare (Ruth Negga, left) and Irene (Tessa Thompson): Incognito in New York

Photo: Netflix

The woman moves uncertainly through the hot summer of New York, she speaks softly and hides her face under a wide brim of a hat.

In the café of an expensive, cool hotel, she seems to wake up and take a deep breath.

Until another woman fixes her, literally impaling her with her gaze, as if trying to discover a secret.

In fact, Irene (Tessa Thompson), who is being viewed here, has something to hide.

But Clare (Ruth Negga), staring so curiously, much more than that.

Both know each other from school, and both are black, but in 1920s America they pose as white.

Irene, however, only now and then when she is out and about in Manhattan.

Clare, on the other hand, is permanent: She is married to a white man, a racist on top of that.

The duel of looks could be the prelude to a lesson on racism.

And that is definitely "changing sides".

But beyond that, a silent and stunningly intense study of identity and the clash of the inner and outer world.

Netflix has high Oscar hopes for this film, the entertainment company wants to send both actresses into the race for the trophy: Ruth Negga as best supporting actress and Tessa Thompson in the category of best leading actress.

Irritatingly free and informal

The story is based on the 1929 novel of the same name by Nella Larsen and is about a woman whose world is being turned upside down. Irene lives a proud upper middle class life in Harlem, with a big house and black staff. Her husband Brian is a doctor, Irene organizes cultural events with black artists and intellectuals. They are fulfilling the new opportunities of African Americans, hoping for a freer future. She does not want to hear news of lynching and racist attacks in her home.

But Clare's appearance deprives Irene of what she believed to be safe. On the one hand, Clare seems to have cut her own roots and, with her decision to pass for the convenience of money and status as a white man, is submitting to an externally determined life. On the other hand, she behaves irritatingly free and informal, takes full risk and questions Irene's orderly relationships. And Clare has a magnetic aura on her fellow human beings, not least on Brian, who seems to fall for her while his marriage to Irene is crunching more and more noticeably.

Whether Brian and Clare really have a relationship, or whether it only exists in Irene's imagination, remains unclear in "Seitenwechsel", and that is not a dramaturgical weakness of the script.

On the contrary, the lack of clarity is the great strength of this gorgeous film, written and directed by Rebecca Hall.

The will to develop one's own stylistic signature can be seen immediately in the black and white pictures, which are designed in the narrow, almost square format of old feature films.

Through style, Hall finds a way to immerse himself in Irene's inner workings.

As difficult as it is for films, in contrast to novels, to portray subjective conditions - in »Seitenwechsel« Hall succeeds in doing this in a fascinatingly intimate way.

Acclaimed premiere at Sundance Festival

Of course there are the expected shots of barred windows and cracks in the wall, but only briefly and unobtrusively. This quiet film, whose radical subjectivity extends to the soundtrack, takes the unheard-of freedom without telling the handles of the conventional racism drama of an ego that threatens to shatter into a thousand pieces under the pressure of circumstances. "Who am I?" Irene has to ask herself this question not only because of Clare's appearance, but also with regard to an omnipresent racism, the existence of which she wants to negate with all her might.

It is quite possible that this film seems so intense, because both the author of the original and the director of the film have had experiences that they process in this story.

Nella Larsen was an important protagonist of the Harlem Renaissance, a heyday of African American art in the United States.

Her mother was a seamstress with Danish roots, her father of Afro-Caribbean origin, who faked his death and lived on under a different name as a white man.

The British Rebecca Hall, who starred as an actress in films such as "Godzilla vs. Kong", also has black ancestors, her maternal grandfather also lived as a white for a long time.

She tried to make this film for thirteen years, but funding regularly failed due to Hall's insistence on black and white images.

After all, she was able to shoot "Seitenwechsel" on her terms. After this year's acclaimed premiere at the Sundance Festival, Netflix bought the film for over 15 million dollars.

There he now stands next to noisy blockbusters like the Dwayne Johnson vehicle "Red Notice", which is published on Friday with a lot of marketing Tammtamm.

It is quite possible, however, that »Seitenwechsel«, this silent study with its two magnificent actresses, will make the bigger headlines at the Oscars in March.

It would be desirable.

Source: spiegel

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