Der Mond und andere Liebhaber (2008) Reviews

• Katharina Thalbach is a good actress, but...

  Horst_In_Translation2015-01-11

  the way this film was written, it was simply not enough to keep me glued to the screen. Director and writer was Bernd Böhlich, who has worked a lot with Horst Krause in the past, another one of my favorite German actors. Böhlich and Thalbach worked together one year earlier on "Du bist nicht allein" and it seems that it was fruitful enough for the two to make another film right away. Sadly, this film suffered from several very questionable screenplay decisions. One would be when Thalbach's character steals the info book about Pakistan without even knowing where her love interest comes from and despite seemingly having enough money to actually pay for it. The next would be the marriage to the guy she absolutely feels nothing for. That was so random, really and as she plays a pretty tough woman I don't believe she would have ever agreed to that. Of course she was equally fragile. In one scene early on we see many cardboard boxes in her room with the description "fragile" and that fits her too. I actually liked that shot, maybe my favorite from the film. However, she is a woman who also manages life on her own. She has done so for many years and she does so after the death of her younger daughter too. There is two scenes when her future husband holds open the front of her car, so she can look what is wrong with it and she holds the front open herself as well to show the audience she does not need a man to do so for her. Fritzi Haberlandt and Birol Ünel ("Soul Kitchen") play smaller characters in this film and I would have actually liked to see more from them as both are pretty talented. It's really all about Thalbach's character. One scene that did not work out so well is the one where she and her daughter discuss the daughter's wish to drive her mom's car right before she dies. It's a nice reference to the mom's guilt in what happened afterward, but this scene just seemed so insignificant compared to what it could have been. Anyway, I was a bit disappointed with the overall outcome. It puts lots of lovers, jobs and relationships in the film, all closely connected to Thalbach's character, but maybe sometimes less can be more and this also applies to this movie. The ending was okay though and made a nice difference from all the heavy topics before that: unrequited love, job/financial troubles, death, illness...

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• Like the moon, partly shadowed, in more than one sense...

  Ralfscheapthrill2008-08-10

  In the beginning, there is stress: How annoying the cadrage is..., how breathless the editing... Of course you notice that the camera concept is about to make sense, because our Hero Hanna is breathless and emotional quite over the edge. But glorious DP Florian Foest (watch out for "Jagdhunde!") is taking it too far, in the first, maybe, forty minutes. He doesn't like too much indoor or incar light either. BUT what comes out of that is pure painting, watch it in a dark cinema, on TV you maybe will not see a thing in this brilliantly organized shadows... The beauty of this film is... well I'll tell you... But first it's important to point out that the storytelling is tending to be quite scrappy, it's like a whole cup of dramas that happen to Hanna, but it has broken to peaces and the biggest parts are adjusted in a slightly imperfect way. A lot in this film is too big, too much color on the lips of thalbach's, too much emotional rock in the score. but after all, this is a film, that seems to be... reigned by love. and like live and love, it doesn't care too much if it's getting on once nerves, sometimes too much. it's funny, it's sad, it's touching. and has great photography, at last.

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