Peter Handke’s second film and adapted from his own novel. Marianne (Edith Clever), a German housewife living with her family in a Parisian suburb, suddenly decides she wants to separate from her husband (Bruno Ganz), and live alone with her son. So begins for her the slow lonely process of self-preservation and fulfillment outside the security of a marriage. Unfolding with a soothing slowness, and bearing visual echoes of both Yasujiro Ozu and Straub/Huillett with the camera often lingering on places, capturing moments of inaction, Handke’s film is a purely poetic experience. Shot beautifully by Wim Wenders’ regular cinematographer Robby Müller, capturing with care the gradual on come of spring, it is a film full of stillness and shifts in light, the clatter of commuter trains, the distant tones of birdsongs.
West Germany 1978, 119 min, colour, DCP, German with English subtitles. Written and directed by Peter Handke, based on the novel by Peter Handke. Cinematography by Robby Müller. With Edith Clever, Bruno Ganz, Bernhard Minetti, Bernhard Wicki, Rüdiger Vogler.
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This screening is part of the event series
Neue Welt: Radical Visions in New German Cinema.
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