Marlene (Sandra Huller) is a flight attendant who suffers from severe nightmares, from which she awakens to draw sketches of her dreams. Her adult daugher Mona (Gro Swantje Kohlhof) takes care of her, but believes her when she says she's scheduled for a flight to Turkey. Instead, Marlene follows her dream-sketches to a hotel in the remote heartland of Germany, a town called Stainbach, and is soon hospitalized after a psychotic break at the hotel. Mona finds her, decides to stay at the same hotel run by Otto (August Schmolzer) and his wife Lore (Marion Kracht), but soon finds that the past is very much with the present in this hotel: including the suicides of the three founders, Otto's mentors, and the fact that Otto needs to be tethered to his bed to prevent him getting out at night....
That's a very sketchy outline of this very effective movie, which is really a deep dive into how the past affects the present, how bygone evil deeds and beliefs can retain their allure for some people, and how, sometimes, it's hard to know what reality is. Sleep: we all do it (even sharks who are not thought to sleep but I think it's just that we don't yet understand their version of sleep), and we all dream too. And that is when, this film suggests, we are most vulnerable - but also most insightful. I expected to be scared by this movie, because of its framing, but I never really got that jolt of adrenalin from fear because it's far more subtle than that. And, no, I don't like scary movies, so I was relieved at that. Instead, I end up finding myself thinking a lot about uncomfortable subjects such as the resurgence of fascism that has never really left us, and how easily it can come back. Recommended.
