REVIEWS


Reviews edited by Mark Adams mark.adams@screendaily.com


Home For The Weekend REVIEWED BY JONATHANROMNEY


You might say Home For The Weekend occupies a default terrain for no-frills adult drama, tracing as it does a family get-together at which long-fester- ing emotional wounds are systematically picked over in a concentrated moment of truth. Hans- Christian Schmid’s ensemble film pretty much takes care of the expected moves, but then also offers some less predictable turns in an elegant, economical and superbly acted mapping of psy- chological undercurrents and (not always explicit) family relations. Schmid has proved a master at depicting famil-


ial hell in his 2006 religion-themed Requiem, and while he covers less extreme material here, this delicately executed miniature — a sharp turn away from the world-politics themes of his 2009 Storm — will yield complexity and depth for viewers who care to delve beneath its deceptively smooth sur- face. The veneer of chic upper-middle-class melo- drama, and lack of an obvious thematic pitch (such as Requiem’s exorcism plot) will make Home For The Weekend a tough sell, but festival and dis- tributors with an eye for upmarket intelligent fare will appreciate its low-key class. Scripted by Bernd Lange, the story quickly


introduces its handful of players. Berlin-based writer Marko Heidtmann (Eidinger), separated from partner Tine (Meckbach), collects their young son Zowie (lively Egon Merten, usually


n 6 Screen International at the Berlinale February 15, 2012 COMPETITION


Ger. 2012. 88mins Director Hans-Christian Schmid Production company 23/5 Filmproduktion International sales The Match Factory, www. the-match-factory.com Producers Britta Knöller, Hans-Christian Schmidt Screenplay Bernd Lange Cinematography Bogumil Godefrejow Editor Hansjörg Weissbrich Production design Christian M Goldbeck Music The Notwist Main cast Lars Eidinger, Corinna Harfouch, Sebastian Zimmler, Ernst Stötzner, Picco von Groote, Eva Meckbach, Birge Schade, Egon Merten


seen sporting a tiger mask) and takes him by train to the environs of Bonn for a weekend at Marko’s parents. Patriarch Günter (Stötzner) is a wealthy publisher, recently retired, while mother Gitte (Harfouch) has a long history of mental disturbance. The parents share their austerely opulent home


— an imposing piece of 1960s modernism — with Marko’s older brother Jakob (Zimmler), an uptight dentist who feels guilty about benefiting from the family fortune; still living at home, he has set up his own surgery with dad’s money but the enter- prise is failing, making him even more dependent. After an initially relaxed reunion, two things


trigger the dramatic crack-up of the Heidtmann family’s precarious happiness: Günter’s intended Middle East research trip for a book he is planning, and Gitte’s surprise announcement that she is giv- ing up her long-term medication, following a turn to alternative medicine. As tensions bubble to the surface — largely in a very controlled, decorously middle-class manner — Jakob’s girlfriend Ella (von Groote) looks on, as eventually does Susanne (Schade), the other woman in Günter’s life. It is when Gitte goes AWOL in nearby woods,


and the family institute a police search for her, that the film takes a turn into more heatedly dramatic territory, heading to a surprising shift of tone in a climax that may conceivably be a dream sequence. A frosty coda, set in winter, economically sketches the long-term changes in family dynamics.


As might be expected, Home For The Weekend is


a gift for its actors, who all maintain superb control in depicting the family’s tightly repressed angst. There are only two moments of outright rage in the film, and they are perfect — and quintessentially bourgeois — in their concise understatement. The film’s consistent refusal of emotional excess


could be a turn-off for viewers who like their conflicts more upfront, but it defines the tone of a film that refuses to gratify the audience with obvi- ous emotional pay-offs. The cast are uniformly impressive. Lars


Eidinger and Sebastian Zimmler are particularly convincing as brothers, catching each other’s emo- tional rhythms (and resembling each other uncannily), while Ernst Stötzner is terrific as the powerful father whose benignity disguises the fact he basically rides roughshod over his clan. If any- one stands out, though, it is Corinna Harfouch, who hints with immense subtlety at Gitte’s distur- bance and deep reservoir of resentment. The hand-held camerawork by Bogumil God-


frejow affords us a vivid, intimate sense of eaves- dropping on the drama, and makes distinctive use of daylight and architectural space. A fairly mini- malist score by German trio The Notwist enhances a sometimes eerily claustrophobic mood.


SCREEN SCORE ★★★


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