Best-selling film adaptation
After 1989: “One day we will tell each other everything”
Marlene Burow as Maria in a scene from the film “Someday we will tell each other everything”. photo
© -/Pandora Film/dpa
An amour fou as a reflection of the difficulties in East Germany shortly after the fall of the Wall. The director Emily Atef has big plans with the bestseller adaptation “One day we will tell each other everything”.
The film leads somewhere in the East German countryside in the summer after the fall of the Berlin Wall: 18-year-old Maria (Marlene Burow) longs for more than the monotony between forest and field. She flees into a love characterized by unrestrained sexual desire for the farmer Henner (Felix Kramer), who is 22 years her senior. But he can’t satisfy her long-term desire. A catastrophe occurs.
The successful director Emily Atef (“3 Days in Quiberon”, “More Than Ever”) has big plans with the film adaptation of the 2011 bestseller “Someday we will tell each other everything” by Daniela Krien. The story of a love story dominated by sexual greed, an amour fou, is intended to reflect the problems in eastern Germany during the so-called reunification period. The novel succeeds with a narrative density that the film lacks despite being more than two hours long.
Social backgrounds from the novel are missing
That’s not the only thing that weighs on the theatrical version. It is also serious that Maria is only 16 in the book. This creates enormous tension. The change in her age to 18 in the film and 19 in the end takes away a lot of explosiveness from the material and damages the character. Because she doesn’t act like an adult, but childishly defiant. That’s unbelievable. On top of that, some finely drawn personal and social backgrounds are missing in the novel. As a result, the story has lost a lot of its urgency.
The opulent images make you feel the oppressive mugginess of summer. They symbolize the heaviness of a life full of crippling routines. This is effective for moments. But in the long run, the simple question arises as to why Maria hasn’t fled long ago. The film gives no answer. He also does not reveal why she desires Henner of all people.
Director Emily Atef powerfully shows the physical togetherness of the unequal couple, which initially ignores all reason. Marlene Burow and Felix Kramer convince in the sex scenes. Felix Kramer even manages to arouse curiosity about Henner’s story with his expressive facial expressions, his earlier life, the reasons why he is such a broken character. Unfortunately, curiosity is not satisfied.
Snapshots of life in the East
There are also snapshots of the complicated life in East Germany after the collapse of Honecker’s socialism. Businesses are disappearing, unemployment is rampant, alcohol abuse is on the rise, and hopelessness is spreading. In a few scenes, for example, Jördis Triebel in the role of Maria’s mother manages to show a woman whose world has painfully fallen apart.
The few but successful sketches of the social and psychological consequences of the political events of autumn 1989 for many people in the now defunct GDR make the film remarkable. They are more memorable than the love story at the center. As an artistic testimony to Germany’s recent past, the film certainly offers some food for thought.