Totem (2011)

A young woman called Fiona shows up in a city in the Ruhr area to work for the Bauer family as a housekeeper. Father, mother, daughter and son all live their own lives, co-existing without ... See full summary »

Director:

Jessica Krummacher

Writer:

Jessica Krummacher (screenplay)

Stars:

Marina Frenk, Natja Brunckhorst, Benno Ifland

1 nomination.

Cast

Complete credited cast:
Marina Frenk	...	Fiona Berlitz
Natja Brunckhorst	...	Claudia Bauer
Benno Ifland	...	Wolfgang Bauer
Alissa Wilms	...	Nicole
Cedric Koch	...	Jürgen
Fritz Fenne	...	Ulli
Dominik Buch	...	Schwimmlehrer
Irmgard Pethke
Jonas Zolyniak
Michael Siepmann
Tobias Jablotschkin
Marco Meyer

Storyline

A young woman called Fiona shows up in a city in the Ruhr area to work for the Bauer family as a housekeeper. Father, mother, daughter and son all live their own lives, co-existing without communicating. Nobody realizes that Fiona has made a decision.

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Plot Keywords:

suicide | inspired by true events | no budget | one word title | independent film

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Genres:

Drama

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Details

Official Sites:

Arepo Media [de]

Country:

Germany

Language:

German

Release Date:

26 April 2012 (Germany)

Also Known As:

Totem oder das Mädchen

Filming Locations:

Bochum, North Rhine - Westphalia, Germany

Box Office

Budget:

€30,000 (estimated)

Company Credits

Production Co:

Cinema for International Audiences, Hochschule für Fernsehen und Film München (HFF), Schlicht & Ergreifend Filmproduktion

Technical Specs

Runtime:

86 min

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

1.85 : 1

User Reviews

A lifeless lack of feeling

* Contains spoilers * This review was written following a screening at, and for, Cambridge Film Festival (UK) in September Totem (2011) is a film of relatively few words, but it arguably has relatively little to say. I wish that it were like Ali Smith's novel The Accidental, but it is not.

Fiona has advertised herself as a maid, apparently through the Internet, and, although she calls her mother as if from a sea-side resort (perhaps she has claimed to be on holiday), she has claimed that both her parents are dead, and that she is 23, which she does not often look. The family make fun of her at first, but that seems to dissolve as a motif when she does a passable pretence at being Keith Jarrett in solo-piano mode.

Otherwise, Claudia shows her how to clean, pushes her around (literally) a few times, and Fiona mutters to herself, when no one is around, about how they do not clean properly and are pigs. Later, when she had seemed to be going, but did not, she talks to herself in the same way, but it sounds more Biblical, maybe Isaiah.

Apparently based on a true story, the write-up in Cambridge Film Festival's programme makes it sound more doomy and laden with meaning than it is, and it is hard to see what, in what unfolds, needs or is made any more relevant by a factual basis. Nothing does happen, and we wonder why the resources of a film needed to be devoted to what is the territory, at best, of a short story.

As I left, not wanting the embarrassment of the Q&A (but also having something else to do), I heard one couple saying how they had been trying to work out who the characters were in relation to each other, another firmly decided that it was a dysfunctional family, that beloved phrase of yore that means not a whit, which jut shows that some viewers will blame themselves for not following, and others put a label on it.