«AEIOU» – Unusual love story with Sophie Rois
Udo Kier as Michel and Sophie Rois as Anna in a scene from the film “AEIOU – The Fast Alphabet of Love”. Photo: Reinhold Vorschneider/Port au Prince Picture/Komplizen Film/dpa
© dpa-infocom GmbH
What would happen if you ran into the person who just stole your bag? A new film starring Sophie Rois and Milan Herms finds a, well, peculiar answer.
Something unusual happened to director Nicolette Krebitz years ago. She herself once pursued a pickpocket – and that later gave rise to the idea for her new film.
“AEIOU – The Fast Alphabet of Love” tells a love story between an older actress (Sophie Rois) and a young man (Milan Herms) who steals her bag. The film is now coming to the cinema four months after the Berlinale.
Rois’ film character seems to have fallen out of time. Anna lives in a large apartment in an old building in Berlin, but is so broke that even a broken washing machine calls for an existential crisis. If she meets other people, she stretches out her fingers to get a kiss on the hand. Anna cooks in an apron and hides her cigarettes on the kitchen cupboard.
The demands of the job met with arrogance
Your apartment is a bit like a design museum. And years ago she trimmed TV presenters for sexist behavior. If she wants to show someone the excerpts from back then, she puts in a video cassette.
“I liked that from the start, that it’s a woman who doesn’t want to take part anywhere,” said Rois (61) of the “Berliner Zeitung”. “She has seen better times, she has done funny, beautiful things in her past. But now she’s at a different point.” Anna faces the demands of her job with a certain arrogance, would rather lie on her landlord’s pocket, go to the “Paris Bar” than sue in the next crime thriller.
When someone stole her handbag on the street one evening, she told her landlord (Udo Kier) about it. “The crazy thing is,” she remarks in amazement, “I wasn’t scared at all. I was ready to die». Then she lights a cigarette. When Anna reluctantly accepts a job shortly afterwards, the pickpocket suddenly appears in front of her again: she is supposed to give him speaking lessons for a theater performance at school.
As the two practice Aaaaaaas and Uuuuuus together, an unusual relationship develops. “Everything begins with A – life, pain, knowledge and love,” it says at one point. The film has something of a sometimes exaggerated, sometimes melancholic fairy tale. One can find him acting stiff and the narrative constructed. But the film has many memorable scenes that also serve as commentaries on today’s world.
Easy and a bit absurd
Director Krebitz (49) has already shot a special love story with “Wild” – in it a woman fell in love with a wolf. Your new film doesn’t have the same impact, but a different quality. He has become easy, somewhat absurd. The film can also be interpreted as a protest against the fact that women beyond adolescence are often labeled as no longer desirable.
Krebitz has had her own experience with a pickpocket in Italy. “I was filming in Venice once and a lady had a handbag stolen from under my nose,” she told the German Press Agency at the Berlinale. “I ran after the thief and actually caught him in an alley.” So she suddenly stood in front of him and he in front of her.
‘Well, and it wasn’t so easy to say anything anymore. I felt sorry for him, but I also thought he was super beautiful and of course I was afraid of him too.” Luckily, the cameraman at the time ran after her and resolved the situation. ‘Perhaps otherwise I would have eloped with the thief too. One does not know…”
– AEIOU – The quick alphabet of love, Germany 2022, 105 min., FSK from 6 years, by Nicolette Krebitz, with Sophie Rois, Milan Herms and Udo Kier.