Goethe-Kino: Nö by Dietrich Brüggemann

A dark, yet sympathetic comedy about a couple navigating the everyday without losing sight of love and who they are. In 15 striking vignettes—by turns satirical, surreal, or absurd – the film lays bare the fears, doubts, and frustrations that shape an ordinary life together.

It begins simply: a couple in bed, talking. What are they thinking? What do they like about each other? Then, suddenly, he, Michael, says he sometimes thinks they should split up. Doesn’t she feel the same at times? “Nö” is her, Dina’s casual understated reply. But it wins. . They stay together. From there, we watch their life unfold over the next seven years: the first pregnancy, the arrival of a child, the struggle to balance parenting and career (mostly Dina’s), coping with difficult parents, a funeral, a children’s birthday. A life that, as Michael fears, might only serve others’ expectations — and that Dina believes they can manage because they agree on what they don't care about.

It is indeed quite a standard life Michael and Dina live, and one that’s been the subject of many a film about thirty-somethings. What makes its depiction unusual is its form. Director Dietrich Brüggemann, winner of the Kalory Vary Film Festival’s director’s award, and his sister Anna, co-author and the film’s female lead, distill this relationship into 15 meticulously composed scenes. Most unfold in a single long take, captured, with some exceptions, by a static camera, often framed like a tableau, a technique Brüggemann also applied in his 2014 film Stations of the Cross (Kreuzweg). Black intertitles mark the passing of time, a week, several months, years. This rigid structure brings soberness and distance to the emotional subject, reinforced by laconic, sometimes puzzling or dark dialogue.

Within these frames, the depiction of the ordinary shifts between satire, tragicomedy, absurdity and the surreal: the moving ultrasound image of a fetus’s head morphs into a monstrous scull; the departure from the hospital with a newborn becomes a flight through a war zone; a patient under anesthesia starts up a conversation about love, desire and life’s choices; the growing up of children is told through the change in their voices audible through a baby monitor. Understatement meets exaggeration, and unease mingles with amusement—depending on how closely your humour aligns with the filmmakers’. Fans of Wim Wenders will definitely enjoy the appearance of both protagonists from Kings of the Road, Rüdiger Vogler and Hanns Zischler. They never share a scene, but their presences make for a nice reference to the film’s German title Im Lauf der Zeit . which translates as “In the Course of Time” – a phrase that could have served well as a title here, though perhaps isn’t quite understated enough.

Gemany 2021, colour, 119 mins. With English subtitles.
Directed by Dietrich Brüggemann. Written by Dietrich Brüggemann and Anna Brüggemann. With Alexander Khuon, Anna Brüggemann, Isolde Barth, Petra Schmidt-Schaller, Dulcie Smart, Nina Petri, Andreas Döhler, Mark Waschke, Felix Goeser, Hanns Zischler, Rüdiger Vogler.