Credited cast: | |||
Tom Schilling | ... | Viktor Jenkins | |
Rainer Bock | ... | Paul Jenkins | |
Corinna Harfouch | ... | Lara Jenkins | |
Maria Dragus | ... | Clara | |
Mala Emde | ... | Johanna | |
Edin Hasanovic | ... | Sascha Czerny | |
Johann von Bülow | ... | Polizist Fauser | |
Mark Filatov | ... | Tobi | |
Hildegard Schroedter | ... | Marion | |
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Friederike Kempter | ... | Boutique-Verkäuferin |
Volkmar Kleinert | ... | Prof. Reinhoffer | |
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Birge Schade | ... | Rebecca |
Gudrun Ritter | ... | Lara's mother | |
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André Jung | ... | Mr. Czerny |
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Hendrik von Bültzingslöwen | ... | Frank |
It's Lara's 60th birthday, and she has every reason to celebrate: this evening, her son Viktor will be giving the most important piano concert of his career. Lara was, after all, the one who'd mapped out and driven his musical career. Yet Viktor has been unreachable for weeks and nothing indicates that Lara will be welcome at his debut performance. Without further ado, she buys up all the remaining tickets and hands them out to everyone she meets. The more Lara strives to make the evening successful, however, the more events get out of control.
The first movie I ever saw at a film festival, albeit it that the Ludwigsburger Lichtspielliebe is a very very new and very very very small and adorable little film festival with only one screening room. But that counts and is all very well done, and the director and lead actor showed up after the film for a fairly lengthy discussion. Lara was one of my most anticipated movies of this year because I love the first film Jan-Ole Gerster did, Oh Boy. This one yet again tells a big story in a down to earth and believable form where the way characters act and speak tells you all you need to know about them, and then some. Yet again it's also about family and being in a bad place in life. Lara, different from his first film, is for a big part about passion and creativity, and it's beautifully directed and written, and of course the performances are great. I'm very happy it turned out so well and hope it won't take Gerster seven years again to put out a new film. I don't know what took him so long, maybe it was just about financing. Anyway, see this one if you can please, it's definitely worth a watch and so full of life, never boring, always being real, and you can tell they really cared about making this as good as it can be. This is a film everyone will be able to get something out of. Fittingly, at one point a character thinks to himself, does the world really need my music or has it been done already and is pointless. I can tell you Lara is thankfully anything but pointless.