REVIEWS
FORUM
Ger. 2012. 94mins Director Ann-Kristin Reyels Production companies Unafilm, ZDF, ARTE, The Post Republic International sales Unafilm,
www.unafilm.de Producer Titus Kreyenberg Screenplay Ann-Kristin Reyels, Antonia Rothe, Katrin Milhan Cinematography Henner Besuch Editor Halina Daugird Production designer Peter Weiss Music Henry Reyels, Marco Baumgartner Main cast Sabine Timoteo, Thure Lindhardt, Ilse Ritter, Tatja Seibt, Vicky Krieps, Christoph Bruckner, Geoffrey Layton, Franc Bruneau
Formentera REVIEWED BY LEE MARSHALL
A young married couple from Berlin find trouble and strife in a Mediterranean paradise in German director Ann-Kristin Reyels’ thriller-tinged second film, which screened in the same Berli- nale Forum section that launched her promising debut, Hounds, in 2007. Thoughtfully directed and impressive as an actor’s film, For-
mentera fails the script test. Beneath its edgy exterior, this is a rather conventional dramatic parable about the superficiality of many northern Europeans’ dreams of the warm south, and the hollow, post-hippy lifestyle of those who have been living it for years. Reminiscent in some ways of Maren Ade’s Everyone Else — in
that it deals with the way the dangerous freedoms of a holiday can act as a relationship catalyst, for better or worse — Formentera should enjoy a small run in German-speaking territories, but is too L’Avventura-lite to enjoy much arthouse action elsewhere. The story focuses on Nina (Timoteo) and Ben (Lindhardt), a
young German couple who have left their daughter back home with mum and headed for the Balearic island of Formentera, just south of Ibiza, to stay with Ben’s older friends. It takes us a while to work out the dynamics and trace the attachments in this alternative family of post-hippies, which includes Christine (Seibt), who has a shop by the port selling kaftans, scarves and ethnic junk, her current partner Georg (Layton) and lugubrious Pit (Bruckner), who turns out to be Christine’s ex — though eve- ryone keeps up the free-love pretence. Also in and out of the restored farmhouse where these
chilled-out ex-pats live are perky German hippy-chick Mara (Krieps) and her French squeeze Pablo (Bruneau); their son Yoko is looked after by everybody, which of course — as when he rather predictably falls off a roof — really means nobody. Nina is a little diffident about her husband’s friends, whose
faintly incestuous ménage does not exactly open up to embrace her, and the hairline fracture this creates is wedged open when she observes Mara flirting with Ben. For a while we stay intrigued, as there is an undertone of
menace in this outwardly laid-back summer idyll — and a kind of wry irony too, as these ageing children of the revolution dis- play all the censoriousness and nosiness of the bourgeoisie from whom they fled. In the end the film growls without roaring, veering into
darker territory and then backing off as if afraid of the conse- quences. There is a sense — present especially in a sequence shot on the neighbouring island of Ibiza — that what we have been watching here is not a real story but the nightmare vision of a young wife and mother.
n 20 Screen International at the Berlinale February 12, 2012
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