November Child (2008)
Malchow, German Democratic Republic, 1980. 20-year-old Anne is hiding Juri, a deserter of the Red Army. The two fall in love with each other. But their love is threatened: there is an arrest warrant and possibly a death sentence waiting for Juri. The two leave the country and flee to the West, leaving Anne’s six-month-old daughter Inga behind. Inga grows up with her grandparents and thinks that her mother died during a swimming accident. 25 years later she meets the literature professor Robert, who sends her on the trail of her past. He met Inga’s mother Anne during one of his seminars. At first Inga is resistant, but then she asks for Robert’s help. Together they take off on a journey through Germany, in search of Inga’s mother Anne...
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Fantastic!
It's funny, it's tense, it features two great performances from two actors and the director expertly creates a web of odd tension where you actually don't know what is happening for the majority of the run time.
The film's masterful storytelling did its job. The message was clear. No need to overdo.
Watching it is like watching the spectacle of a class clown at their best: you laugh at their jokes, instigate their defiance, and "ooooh" when they get in trouble.
As far as Inga knows, she was raised by her grandparents after her mother drowned. An aspiring writer, Robert, happens to come about her real back story and makes contact with Inga, with an ill-conceived plan to use her as the subject in his first novel without her knowledge, taking notes about her as she goes about uncovering her past.Acting overall is fine. However, the key failing of this movie is that both the protagonists do not aspire empathy and characters moving enough to inspire a strong interest from the viewer. Inge's reaction and behaviour is too adolescent and self-centred for us to care enough about her and her 'predicament', coming across as unnecessarily selfish and petulant, so we just watch her unmoved. Robert is too low-key,hesitant and annoying, so we too watch him unmoved. Only the mother held some empathy from the viewer - a relatively small part, played by the same actress playing Inga the daughter -while the acting was fine, it is perplexing why the director would have both of these characters look exactly exactly exactly the same, which is ridiculous, confusing and annoying to the viewer. Using a more sepia tone to denote we are watching the past is not good enough when the two different characters obviously look identical.Overall, it is a good enough effort from director Christian Schwochow, given this is his first feature length movie.