Anke Engelke shines in the movie "Mother": much more than mom

Created: 09/28/2022, 15:25

By: Ulrike Frick

Anke Engelke likes to touch hot irons in her work.

In this film: the role of the mother.

Mind jazz © TOM TRAMBOW

Anke Engelke slips into various female roles in Carolin Schmitz' cinema drama "Mother".

Worth seeing - not only for mums.

The first picture immediately causes irritation: you see the actress Anke Engelke, alone, sitting in a bathtub.

She moves her lips.

But what you hear is the voice of another woman.

With this trick, filmmaker Carolin Schmitz combines fiction with documentary in her production “Mutter”.

Cleanses the topic of the automatically resonating emotional ballast.

Because instead of Engelke, you can hear the intertwined monologues of eight real women on the audio track, some of whom talk very intimately and oppressively about the eponymous topic of motherhood.

This is not only disturbing because Anke Engelke's performance is still secretly associated with "Ladykracher" skits or at least the demure humor of a feature film like "My Son" and not with this type of art project.

But the longer the anonymous women of different ages, who can be easily distinguished by dialect coloring, choice of words, language errors or melody, talk about their self-image as mothers, the more succinctly the intention that Schmitz is pursuing with this film idea becomes apparent.

The mother is always many roles in one, from the heroine willing to make sacrifices to the deadly legendary figure.

All of these facets and the various contemporary typifications of motherhood are prepared by Schmitz in detail.

The voices talk about their pregnancies and traumatic birth experiences, about ambivalent feelings towards the child, about failed relationships and suicidal wishes.

Meanwhile, Engelke can be seen cleaning the windows with calm gestures, doing the shopping or driving the car through the car wash.

This creates an extreme distance, but thanks to Engelke's lip-synchronous and impressively intense presentation, it also creates a permanently high level of tension.

"Mother" with Anke Engelke.

Directed by Carolin Schmitz.

Running time: 85 minutes.