Anarchic clockworks and a tumor like a rock in the head: the Berlinale comes up with strong Swiss films. The cinematic revelation, however, comes from China.
By Dominic Schmid, Berlin
Visually stunning drama in the Urner Alps: Michèle Brand in the film “Drii Winter” by Michael Koch. Still: Armin Dierolf, hugofilm
The place is familiar, the look at it is not. In Cyril Schäublin’s «Unrueh» not only the perspectives are out of whack, but also the time itself. In the watchmaking town of St. Imier around 1877, the clocks show different times depending on the context. Those who determine these also have access to the possibilities of living together.
But the decoupling of time and space also reveals new social constructs. In «Unrueh» it is the Jurassic anarchists who resist the economic conquest of the time. But the film opens up the interpretation of everything that comes after and what would have been possible if a different concept of community and time economy had prevailed. “Unrueh” is a Swiss film that you don’t often see, but which will probably have a hard time with its bulkiness.
Three Swiss-directed films made it into the two competitions at the Berlinale, which was able to take place physically again this year. Hardly anything can be heard from the critical voices about this decision (cf. «Against the wall?») at the festival itself. The protective measures are strict, but work well. The cinemas are filled to a maximum of half in a checkerboard pattern, and journalists have to be tested every day, regardless of their vaccination status. It’s not pleasant, but thanks to the very good organization it’s quite bearable. When a British journalist, dissatisfied with being assigned seats, tried to incite a riot on the stage of the Berlinale Palast, he was booed.
Not a step closer
This fits a little with this year’s competition, where the films often deal with how individual elements of a community behave when they are threatened from inside or outside. Much is above average, so one can speak of a good to very good vintage. Isaki Lacuesta makes the greatest moral-aesthetic lapse with his Bataclan drama “Un año, una noche” – one of those inglorious works that believe that by re-enacting recent violent events they are contributing to their processing. Otherwise, even Ulrich Seidl exudes something like optimism this year when he lets the absurd but not unsympathetic tearjerker and callboy Richie Bravo in “Rimini” experience forgiveness even in the most inconspicuous of all possible places – a Seidl film.
Of the two Swiss films in the main competition, Ursula Meier’s “La Ligne” is surprisingly the less interesting. The drama about a broken relationship between a mother (Valeria Bruni Tedeschi) and her daughter, who is prone to aggression, convinces with its raw emotionality and Stéphanie Blanchoud’s portrayal of the daughter. However, when the screenplay insists on the metaphorical power of the eponymous blue line that the younger daughter drew a hundred meters radius around the house to mark the court-ordered ban on contact with her sister, the drama ends up being constructed.
Others proceed more gently and, because the development of the characters seems less forced by the script, more authentic. “Les Passagers de la nuit” with Charlotte Gainsbourg tells the pleasantly relaxed story of a family who takes in an aimless teenager in Paris in the 1980s, whereby the dialogues do not claim mutual consideration and care, but only allow the tone to resonate.
Listening to your own characters first instead of judging them: Canadian Denis Côté also follows this principle in «Un Été comme ça». As part of a retreat, three hypersexual women are confronted with two therapists. What some critics disliked is what characterizes the film: like the therapists, the screenplay does not expect any “development” from the women. Côté simply lets his characters act, react to one another in different constellations – in order to ultimately suggest that “normal” and “abnormal” are constructs. And anyone who sees hypersexuality, like other neurological abnormalities, as a “disorder” subjects it to an assessment that can hardly be morally justified.
Thoughts are buzzing everywhere
The electrical interactions in “Avec amour et acharnement” by Claire Denis, the great film philosopher of desire, could also be interpreted as pathological. The tale of an old relationship invading a new one may not be the most original, but with Claire Denis, the essence has always played out on another level, between the different surfaces: skin interacts with skin, and everywhere in between they buzz thoughts and the music. Incidentally, no film has ever linked the pandemic more elegantly with cinematic reality than Denis casually succeeds in doing here.
Illness for the third time, as real and immovable as the rock that is emblazoned in Michael Koch’s “Drii Winter” in the first picture. The tumor in the brain of the Urner mountain farmer Marco (Simon Wisler) is five by three centimeters in size. At the beginning he says to his wife Anna (Michèle Brand) that he can’t believe how nice it is with her, and fate doesn’t need to be asked twice. The tumor is slowly robbing the silent giant of his impulse control. Marco becomes more and more impetuous, his ability to work suffers, and a threatening situation arises with Anna’s daughter. The film tells of how the community of the relatively isolated mountain community urges Anna to break away from Marco and how Anna finally resists this expectation. «Drii Winter» thrives on a visually stunning staging and the presence of its amateur actors. Even if a few irritating motifs are somewhat distracting and Koch’s aesthetics are not always entirely consistent: an impressive work.
A deeply caring partnership
After all, “Return to Dust” is not just impressive, but very close to the area where terms like “masterpiece” or “cinematic revelation” sound appropriate. The film by the young Chinese Li Ruijun begins as a naturalistic study of rural society in modern China and develops over two and a half hours into a deeply moving parable about working for one’s own happiness. An outsider and an outsider are more or less forced into marriage by their families, and no one expects more from them than to stop causing the village a bad conscience.
But then the two begin to develop a deeply nurturing partnership, so that a simple but real contentment seems possible in a country striving towards capitalist modernity at despotic high speed. «Return to Dust» consists of a minimalist sequence of tableaus, most of which show rural work: in the field, at home, at the well-being of others. The dialogue between the two consists mainly of proverbs and gentle admonitions to the other to take things a little easier. As a constant companion, the faithful working donkey announces a form of time that cannot be measured by any clock.
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