Tribute to Fédéréric Hambalek Regerge | EUROtoday

From the occasions when every little thing revolved across the German center class, a product that modified on a regular basis life in 1974: The “electric babysitter” of the Reer firm from Leonberg in Baden-Württemberg made it potential to have an ear on the new child whereas was not in the identical area. Today you now not must put a cable by the home, and naturally newer units have a video perform. The child cellphone will not be a trivial element in on a regular basis life, it’s a product with far -reaching implications. The time period was additionally the time period the filmmaker Frédéric Hambalek, who got here up with an thought by photos that confirmed his personal little one whereas sleeping and dreaming: What if the roles have been distributed in a different way? If the kid might watch what the dad and mom do whereas they suppose they’re unobserved?

This named the premise for his movie “What Marielle knows”. In February, Hambalek was surprisingly nominated within the Berlinale competitors, however went away empty -handed there. In the German movie business, not many could have had him on his display screen – a younger man from Karlsruhe, not but forty years previous, earlier than after which solely recorded as a screenwriter every now and then, then a primary movie with the title “Model Olimpia” in 2019. And now “what Marielle knows”. For 86 minutes, no fiber an excessive amount of, and trembling earlier than ambivalence. Is the story of a pair with an enormous daughter a comedy? A thriller? A horror movie? Of every little thing at the least one thing and one thing distinctive within the combine.

If you place “what Marielle knows” alongside Tom Tykwers “Das Licht”, then you do not simply have two movies that occur to look at this 12 months’s Berlinale by likelihood (one as a gap movie out of competitors, the opposite within the competitors). You have two movies about households below stress. And you’ve got two putting reverse positions. Tykwer with an expansive main manufacturing that strives for a lot of instructions supported by every little thing that German movie funding has to supply. Hambalek with a small manufacturing, artwork and a little bit of regional funding, two stars (Julia Jentsch and Felix Kramer) and a discovery (Laeni Geiseler as Marielle). “The Light” is a movie that places every little thing outwards that’s involved. “What Marielle knows” condenses every little thing into a superbly composed, elastic determine.

The start line at Hambalek is a indisputable fact that it derives with no hand. Marielle is pushed in school. The small act of violence kinds the prologue, in massive recording, in slowing down. An act that works as if it have been outdoors of actuality. However, he has penalties. Because one thing should have shifted in marial mind. She all of the sudden is aware of what her dad and mom are doing. The mom Julia flirts with a colleague within the firm throughout a break, she needs to really feel extra sexually once more. The father Tobias has a number one perform in a writer, however is put below strain by an bold worker. He is bare, acts unsuspecting. If Marielle has had a father ultimate, it will get breaks. Because when the household sits on the desk, she has every little thing that occurred through the day.

With this concept of ​​a small household, which has gotten right into a terrorist regime of complete transparency out of the blue, Hambalek then actually works systematically. He performs by all of the implications of his thought and on the similar time leaves the thought in a devoted one. How this might be concrete might be conceivable, what Marielle experiences, what’s going on in her mind, if she lives in three realities on the similar time, that does not matter intimately and as an occasion solely has his place within the face of Laeni Geiseler, the excellent main actress.

With an “impossible” state of consciousness, Hambalek already performed in “Model Olimpia”. It begins with the sentence: “I very, very sad that I’m dead.” He comes from a younger man who lives along with his mom in a mean house someplace in an not noticeable space in Germany. Perhaps the sentence is a part of a job -playing recreation, however the ambiguity about what actuality is “model Olimpia” and makes up the core of its rigidity. In any case, mom and son have one thing like a challenge with one another: “We can do it.” Is there a depreciation of a institutional offender outdoors of an establishment? The mom wraps her son in plastic and easily leaves him on this arduous bondage for an hour. “We are not allowed to let go. The body does not take any breaks.” A younger girl is employed, she is offered for a brutal position -playing recreation that’s filmed with a cellphone. Does that find yourself as a “reel” on a social community? Or in a conspiratorial group that arouses in such border gears?

At that point, Frédéric Hambalek didn’t attempt to get movie funding for “model Olimpia”. He used 10,000 euros in financial savings and produced roughly on his personal. He knew that he was higher in a position to create one thing based on his personal statements that might be his ticket to German movie. The puzzles that he offers up along with his movie are nonetheless reinforcing in the meanwhile when it seems what is supposed by the “model Olimpia”: a model that now will increase the hints that the boundaries between life and loss of life are completely different than one normally presupposes in invented tales.

From the on a regular basis lifetime of German cinemas you realize many instances during which screenplays are revised to stronger comprehensibility. Especially when tv is within the recreation, uniqueness turns into a strict commandment. Against this background, Hambalek is such an thrilling filmmaker as a result of every little thing is all the time clear with him: every little thing is open to the digital camera. What you see is what you get. At the identical time, nevertheless, he places this uniqueness right into a state of sturdy disturbance. This creates movies which might be clearly formed by an amazing film-historical knowledge-in Hollywood, folks used to talk of B-movies, i.e. of secondary movies, on which much less industrial printing was used and during which tales of formal tales have been created partially. This legacy makes Hambalek sturdy for German movie once more.

This is an fascinating improvement in that he really belongs to the era, who grew up with the omnivour blockbusters of the seventies and eighties. If you ask him what was a cinema for him in his childhood, he replies: “Star Wars”. Then, nevertheless, he noticed a movie on tv on the age during which Marielle can also be a movie that modified every little thing for him: “2001 – Odyssey in space” by Stanley Kubrick. A movie that really solely is sensible on a big display screen. But for Hambalek there’s additionally one thing on the small tv display screen that now additionally shapes his personal work. Kubrick was an enormous constructivist. He left no element from likelihood. When he made a battle movie, reminiscent of “Full Metal Jacket”, then most well-liked to be within the studio.

This sturdy management over a fictional universe is now additionally characterised by Hambaleks cinema. With this facet, “the light” is as soon as once more an fascinating reverse pole. Tom Tykwer is after all the creator, however with a gesture that factors past himself. You get to know a subjective place that’s intersectively distributed. Hambalek, however, stands for subjectivity that focuses radically. His cinema has nothing theoretical, however you suppose you are feeling that he additionally studied movie science in Mainz. He is aware of how tales work and offers with it.

In “What Marielle knows” he places a constellation below the present that’s at the start of the story: father, mom, little one primarily incorporates every little thing there’s about folks. Marielle is at an age when she is at present starting to not solely expertise her position on this triangle, but in addition to grasp. This understanding will increase Hambalek to absolutely the overwhelming. However, this can’t be represented, so all three individuals in some way proceed. This is in some way the crux of the movie. Especially the dad and mom improvise, on the one hand they’ve to seek out out what goes and on the similar time searching for methods to finish the unsustainable situation.

Hambalek is aware of learn how to put Julia Jentsch and Felix Kramer into distinctive situations. Both are acquainted faces, they don’t seem to be among the many large stars, however they’re very current. Both are coping with an disagreeable position right here. The publicity that’s within the middle of historical past should even be processed in entrance of the digital camera. In entrance of a digital camera that she doesn’t defend – Julia Jentsch specifically has some main pictures that aren’t advantageous. But that is the one strategy to perceive Marielle’s data in all its ache. You can even learn Hambalek’s movie as an allegory on a lack of non-public studying, into which social networks urge a pressure that consumes every little thing and turns into photos, which was as soon as private. But that can also be a secondary facet, additionally from “Model Olimpia”.

Radical and huge turns into “what Marielle knows” by attacking the gap between id and self -image. We all suppose to know who we’re, however solely have one thought of ​​it. This thought is the key that we do in entrance of the folks we’re near and that we reveal once we change into belief. Hambalek jumps this complicated self -relationship. He makes folks bare, bare, once they might ever be in a porn. And on this nudity it’s a must to proceed as if nothing was. That may also be unusual. But solely as a virtuoso horror movie makes “what Marielle knows” actually is sensible.