See it with someone you love ... and maybe even trust.
Married couple Peter and Katerina are drifting apart: while in Brussels on business, he visits a hooker, and returning home, half-heartedly pursues a liaison with a former classmate; meanwhile, his wife, a graphic designer, conducts a brief fling with a poet, whose book of verse - titled, ironically, Closeness - she's designing. But only one of them will pay the price...
Co-written by Romanian director Sinisa Dragin (whose Every Day God Kisses Us on the Mouth played EIFF in 2002), this is an uncomfortably clear-eyed look at marital discord and sexual politics, reminiscent in its power, and unflinching honesty, of Bergman's great Scenes from a Marriage. Faultlessly acted by its ensemble cast, and stylishly directed, it's a film for adults, unafraid to confront the issues it raises.
princess(prinzessin)
Birgit Grosskopf / Germany / 2006 / 82 min
Irina Potapenko, Henriette Müller, Desirée Jaeger, Amina Schichterich
You know, that title might just be ironic...
The 'princesses' of the title are a gang of four young women, living in the public housing slums of a dismal West German suburb: Katharina, recently relocated from Russia; Yvonne, who's about to go to prison for almost beating another girl to death; perverse, sexually aggressive Jenny; and Mandy, a creepily precocious 11-year-old. It's the dead space between Christmas and New Year's Eve, and the girls are trying to make the most of Yvonne's last day of freedom: the following morning, she must report to jail. But Yvonne, unpredictable to the last, has other plans... Depicting its dead-end setting with discomfiting fidelity, lit by flashes of sudden, surreal invention (like the sound of fireworks, constantly exploding from the tenement balconies), this is a powerful, harrowing drama about friendship, loyalty and betrayal.
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