A fight between friends, a slap in the face, and suddenly teenage girl Marielle (Laeni GEISELER) can see and hear everything her mom and dad are up to all day long. This is the premise that begins Frederic HAMBALEK's film, which made it into this year's competition at the BERLINALE 2025. HAMBALEK had recently written the screenplay for the ARD television film DER NEUE FREUND (THE NEW FRIEND) starring Corinna HARFOUCH.
The dramas that unfold from now on between the married couple Julia (Julia JENTSCH), Tobias (Felix KRAMER), and their daughter Marielle reach the nitty-gritty. Julia has developed a passionate passion for dirty talk with her colleague Max (Mehmet ATESCI) at work, and Tobias, a somewhat tedious editor, is saddled with a cheeky colleague (Moritz TREUENFELS) who gleefully saws at his chair. It's not nice when your own teenage daughter finds out about all this.
How do you deal with having a living hybrid of Google and spy software in your own home? Actually, in this age of high technology, where self-monitoring devices are tucked away in everyone's pocket in the form of smartphones, this isn't so far-fetched anymore.
The actors are wonderfully cast against their own type: The otherwise so practical Felix Kramer (in competition at the 2023 Berlinale with SOME DAY WE WILL TELL EACH OTHER EVERYTHING) plays the hesitant intellectual, and the girlish Julia Jentsch (2005 European Film Award for Sophie Scholl) shines as the passionate adulteress. The reunion with Sissy Höfferer, who plays Marielle's grandmother, is also nice.
German-language films often suffer from the fact that they're set in an upscale environment, in exquisitely tidy, showpiece houses that could easily be a museum of modern art. This is also the case in this film. But it's not a problem, as the entire small, showpiece family is dismantled, so that even the museum-like home seems ridiculous.
An interesting little film that certainly didn't win a Bear, and rightfully so, but offers German-speaking film stars like Julia Jentsch and Felix Kramer the opportunity to break out of their usual roles and showcase new facets of their acting talent.
