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Scene from "Closed Society": This time the teachers are annoying
Photo: Wolfgang Ennenbach / Sony Pictures
In cinemas from March 14:
"Closed Society"
At some point, the young teacher's collar bursts.
"The last thing this school is about is the students," Sara Schuster (Nilam Farooq) snaps at her colleagues in the staff room.
Schuster's eyes are wide, his brow furrowed with anger in the face of actually reasonable people who, out of sheer laziness, reject all new ideas.
"What a pathetic, undignified spectacle!" she groans at the gossip of her colleagues.
Like his film »Frau Müller muss weg« (2015), Sönke Wortmann's comedy »Einschlusse Gesellschaft« takes on the running of the school.
But this time it's not the parents who are annoying, but the teachers.
A father (Thorsten Merten) storms into the school his son attends at gunpoint on a Friday afternoon.
The hostage-taker wants the assembled teachers to deal with the one point that his son is missing for his Abitur.
The pedagogues, however, with the exception of the young teacher Schuster, stubbornly insist on the only apparently unalterable values of the Pauker-drilling, testing, screening.
The inertia of the powerful in a German model institution, the grammar school, is presented here, based on a screenplay by Jan Weiler, with the courage to be drastic and quite amusing.
Because the system supposedly doesn't allow it, smart people refuse to acknowledge the changes in the world - for example digital teaching methods, lesson times adapted to psychological findings, ideas for greater integration of children from educationally disadvantaged backgrounds.
With the great Nilam Farooq and established comedy actors such as Anke Engelke, Florian David Fitz and Justus von Dohnanyi, Wortmann turns it into an experienced farce.
Some twists and turns of the hostage-taking drama are great nonsense, but many of Germany's teachers will still argue about the film's message.
Wolfgang Hoebel
»Enclosed Society«, Germany 2022. Director: Sönke Wortmann.
Screenplay: Jan Weiler.
With Nilam Farooq, Anke Engelke, Justus von Dohnanyi, Florian David Fitz.
97 minutes.
»Red Rockets«
Donald Trump is one, as is Fran Lebovitz, as is the QAnon shaman, as well as Will Smith and his family: They are hustlers, hard sells in their own right.
Always under high pressure, always optimistic that life can be mastered with a little twisting and bending.
In the cinema, the hustler as an American archetype has mostly had to yield to the gangster, but that is changing as US hegemony wanes.
And for precisely this time of transition, this interregnum, the films by US independent director Sean Baker (»Tangerine LA«, »The Florida Project«) are perfect.
They are populated by prostitutes, homeless people and drug dealers, by people who rarely have more than their own bodies to put on the scales and who do exactly that when they are in dire need.
It therefore seemed only a matter of time before Baker chose a porn actor as the main character: In »Red Rocket«, Mikey (Simon Rex) tried to restart after 17 years in the »adult film business«, albeit in the Texas backwater where he once left his drug-addicted wife and where he is now flirting with the very young saleswoman of a donut shop.
Whatever plans Mikey hatches goes terribly wrong, of course, because no one was expecting a burnt-out porn star.
But when it comes to hustling, it is not important that the current deal comes about - but that you never lose faith in the next possible deal.
There is probably no more American hero than Mikey right now, and no more American film than Red Rocket.
Hannah Pilarczyk
»Red Rocket«, USA 2021. Director: Sean Baker.
Screenplay: Baker, Chris Bergoch.
Starring Simon Rex, Suzanna Son, Bree Elizabeth Elrod.
131 minutes.
"All went well"
The film adaptation of Emmanuèle Bernheim's autobiographical bestseller of the same name tells the story of Emmanuèle's father (André Dussollier), who is paralyzed on one side after a stroke and is dependent on the help of others.
The busy art dealer asks his older daughter (Sophie Marceau) to send him euthanasia.
She contacts a Swiss institute whose representative is played by Hanna Schygulla with a strangely glowing dignity.
Another strong supporting role, that of Emmanuèle's ailing mother, was cast by director François Ozon with Charlotte Rampling.
»Everything went well« treats the existential theme with astonishing nonchalance without being irresponsible.
Ozone repeatedly contrasts death with the everyday life of its main character Emmanuèle, a woman in the midst of life.
Felix Bayer
»Everything went well«, France 2021. Director, Screenplay: François Ozon.
With Sophie Marceau, André Dussollier, Hanna Schygulla.
113 minutes.
Read an interview with Sophie Marceau about the film here.
»The Innocents«
New job, new place of residence, but still school holidays: The parents of nine-year-old Ida (Rakel Lenora Fløttum) and her older, autistic sister Anna (Alva Brynsmo Ramstad) are relieved when the girls immediately make friends with their new friends on the farm play in the large high-rise residential complex or explore the nearby grove.
If you take a closer look, they don't do what the kids do there.
The audience has to take care of that, and in return they are offered terribly nasty things: No film has been so afraid of children since Veronika Franz' and Severein Fialas' »I see, I see«.
Ida, Anna and their friends Ben (Sam Ashraf) and Aisha (Mina Yasmin Bremseth Asheiment) discover that they are connected telepathically, two of them even have telekinetic powers.
They first try out these forces in the forest on branches that crunch and break.
When one of the group starts breaking human bones, a power struggle ensues: How much cruelty do the children allow each other?
The Norwegian Eskil Vogt is best known for his screenplays for the films he made with his compatriot Joachim Trier. They have just been nominated for two Oscars for their romantic comedy »The Worst Man in the World« (German release: June 2).
In his second directorial work, he now translates his keen sense of interpersonal tension, with the help of cameraman Stura Brandth Grøvlen and an outstanding children's ensemble, into suspense-laden scenes whose horror is only made worse by the warm late summer sun and the pretty children's faces.
Interestingly, the fact that two of the children have Arabic-African roots and one child has vitiligo plays no part in the story: perhaps »The Innocents« is a pioneer of post-diverse cinema that casually ignores certain identitarian markers.
Hannah Pilarczyk
»The Innocents« NOR 2021. Written and directed by Eskil Vogt.
With Rakel Lenora Fløttum, Alva Brynsmo Ramstad, Sam Ashraf, Mina Yasmin Bremseth Asheiment.
117 minutes
In streaming:
»Deep Water«, Amazon Prime Video
British director Adrian Lyne made a name for himself in the 1980s with three erotic films: »Flashdance«, about which SPIEGEL wrote in 1983 that the film was absolutely nothing;
»9 1/2 Weeks«, unforgettable for the scene in which Kim Basinger and Mickey Rourke play with food in front of the open refrigerator;
and "A Fateful Affair," a remarkably misogynist thriller with a reactionary family image.
It is not known why Lyne wanted to do another film at the age of 81 after a 20-year break.
In any case, »Tiefe Wasser« seems as if he was woken up from a deep sleep and he continued on as he did before.
He even lights up a sex scene with neon lights like in the blissful eighties.
»Tiefe Wasser« is about a disastrous marriage in which an easily irritable woman makes her extremely bored spouse jealous with other men.
Or so.
In any case, the two constantly hang around at never-ending parties in huge mansions and stalk each other.
Whereby Ben Affleck, who plays the man, seems as if he would nod off before the next sentence of dialogue.
Although his film wife is portrayed by Ana de Armas, with whom he also had an affair in real life.
Nevertheless, the film is about as exciting as an endless mindfulness exercise, not to speak of eroticism.
If you want to gossip about a really bad movie, you should definitely watch »Tiefe Wasser« for party talk.
Oliver Kaever
»Deep Water«, USA 2022. Director: Adrian Lyne.
Screenplay: Zach Heim, Sam Levinson.
With Ben Affleck, Ana de Armas.
115 minutes.
