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Film scene from »The most beautiful boy in the world«: Björn Andrésen on the set of »Death in Venice«
Photo: missingFilms / epd
In cinemas since December 29th
"The Most Beautiful Boy in the World"
When the Italian star director Luchino Visconti was preparing the film adaptation of Thomas Mann's novel »Death in Venice« (1971), he traveled to Sweden to find a boy of haunting beauty.
He discovered the then 15-year-old Björn Andrésen and cast him in the role of the boy Tadzio, to whom the composer Gustav von Aschenbach, played by Dirk Bogarde, falls.
At the Cannes Festival, Visconti presented Andrésen as »the most beautiful boy in the world«.
Kristina Lindstrom's and Kristian Petri's documentary The Most Beautiful Boy in the World reveals that the 67-year-old actor is still grappling with the fallout from early fame.
Andrésen, who appeared in the horror film »Midsommar« a few years ago but apparently lives in precarious circumstances, was marketed as a blonde, curly-haired sensation, especially in Japan.
Recordings of his public appearances at the time convey the grotesque hype very vividly.
Andrésen's grandmother, who raised him, apparently wanted him to be famous at all costs.
All sorts of strangers tried to make a star out of him.
Hardly anyone seemed to care what all this was doing to him.
The documentary travels with him once again to the sites of his early triumphs, which disturbed him more than he was able to enjoy them.
It is a wistful, but at times forgiving look at a life largely determined by others.
Lars Olav Beier
»The Most Beautiful Boy in the World«.
Sweden 2021. Written and directed by: Kristina Lindström, Kristian Petri.
With Bjorn Andrésen.
93 minutes
»What you can see from here«
In the hilly German countryside, people roam the forest meditating in the manner of Japanese Buddhists – and others who dream of okapis.
It's a bittersweet village comedy full of signs and wonders, directed by Aron Lehmann and based on Mariana Leky's hit novel.
Not the least of these miracles is that the actress Corinna Harfouch, who otherwise often seems cold, plays a really heartwarming role in the film »What you can see from here«.
Harfouch embodies the old Selma, who brings up her granddaughter Luise (portrayed as a child by Ava Petsch, as a young woman by Luna Wedler).
For many years, Selma has been adored by the village optician (great: Karl Markovics), who is hopelessly in love with her.
He writes her letters and notes all the time, which he never sends.
Enraptured by this strange passion of the old woman, Luise lives through the drama of the first heartbreak and the farewell to childhood with graceful, stubborn undeterred.
"If you take a closer look, most things in life seem strange anyway," this heroine once said.
From time to time she seems to be a sister of the main character from »The Fabulous World of Amélie«, who lives in Paris.
But the sometimes sad, sometimes great twists of fate in the German village develop their own magic in this film.
Wolfgang Hoebel
»What you can see from here«.
Germany 2022. Written and directed by Aron Lehman.
With Luna Wedler, Ava Petsch, Corinna Harfouch, Karl Markovics.
109 minutes
»Annie Ernaux – The Super 8 Years«
With Annie Ernaux, the flow of time is always a little different.
The Frenchwoman first made her international breakthrough as a writer at the age of 70 thanks to books such as the memoir »The Years« (originally »Les années«). Now, at the age of 82, she is also conquering the cinema.
In 2021, the film adaptation of her autofiction work »The Event« by Audrey Diwan won the Golden Lion in Venice.
In May 2022 she presented her first directorial work in Cannes: »Les années Super-8«.
It is a collage made with her son David Ernaux-Briot of the Super 8 films that the Ernaux family made between 1972 and 1981.
Now the one-hour film, which was already shown in the Arte media library, is coming to the cinema with a strong advertising boost thanks to the Nobel Prize for Literature for Ernaux.
Ernaux's late husband and father of their two sons was always behind the camera for the shots of vacations and family celebrations that the film collects and which Ernaux laconically comments on - a strict division of tasks according to gender, as Ernaux attests.
The marriage of the two seems to be shaped by such constraints.
As you already know from »The Years«, the connection was not a happy one.
It is unclear whether one would have understood it from the pictures.
Most of them are too vague and banal to stand up to Ernaux's trenchant commentary.
How Ernaux writes her own story through persistent self-questioning remains impressive in the film version as well.
Hannah Pilarczyk
»Annie Ernaux – The Super 8 Years«.
France 2022. Written and directed by Annie Ernaux, David Ernaux-Briot.
63 minutes