I don't think there is another film in the history of cinema that examines the lives of seniors (including -- gasp! -- their sex lives) with such honesty, poignancy and, yes, accuracy as Wolke Neun (Cloud Nine). Those characters on the screen could be your parents or grandparents, and there they are, still grappling painfully with the problems of love after all these years.
This is a powerful film that is about much more than a mere examination of old people f***ing. Despite the typical stress on the (non-explicit) sex, it is a film more about the discovery of first love by a woman well advanced in years, a woman who should have known all this stuff (or so the theory goes) 45 years before.
Hats off to director/co-writer Andreas Dresen for giving us this honest, courageous film that can upset and depress you at the same time as it can ultimately uplift you.
Ursula Werner provides a shattering, bravura performance as the besieged, 66-year-old Inge, a married woman who is strongly attracted to a man ten years older (Karl, played by Horst Westphal). She engages in an affair with Karl while still proclaiming her love for Werner (Horst Rehberg), her husband of 30 years. Inge cannot understand the startling turn of events, or why they happened, but she discovers she loves Karl.
Inge says, again and again: 'I didn't want this!', but the camera forces the viewer to challenge her. This woman has lived a life hidden from herself; she has spent 30 years being protected by Werner, who helped to raise her child. After a sheltered life dotted by drudgery and routine (she goes on aimless train trips to please her train-loving husband; she sings methodically in a church choir), we see Inge coming to the painful realization that she is finally emerging as a real person at the age of 66. She begins to understand, with tortuous internal conflict, what love really is.
There is a riveting scene in the film when the sublime Werner (Inge) stands by railroad tracks in cascading rain. With her back to the camera, she screams at the earth (or is it at herself?), then turns and walks towards us: we see then a face of boundless anguish, a face that has realized something for the first time: after all these years, it is, for her, a terrifying and devastating discovery.
There are flaws in this film (we know little about Karl or Werner, for example), but I still highly recommend it. This is a first in cinema, an adult film about REAL 'old people,' and we'll probably not see another like it for a long time to come. Finally, seniors in cinema have been given a genuine, authentic voice. It is a tribute to Germany, and perhaps Europe in general, that a film like this could be made. It's a work that would never (repeat, NEVER) be considered in the dumbed-down, juvenile, cartoonish world of Hollywood, which prefers to mass-produce movies that have little to do with the reality and pain of everyday human existence.
This is a powerful film that is about much more than a mere examination of old people f***ing. Despite the typical stress on the (non-explicit) sex, it is a film more about the discovery of first love by a woman well advanced in years, a woman who should have known all this stuff (or so the theory goes) 45 years before.
Hats off to director/co-writer Andreas Dresen for giving us this honest, courageous film that can upset and depress you at the same time as it can ultimately uplift you.
Ursula Werner provides a shattering, bravura performance as the besieged, 66-year-old Inge, a married woman who is strongly attracted to a man ten years older (Karl, played by Horst Westphal). She engages in an affair with Karl while still proclaiming her love for Werner (Horst Rehberg), her husband of 30 years. Inge cannot understand the startling turn of events, or why they happened, but she discovers she loves Karl.
Inge says, again and again: 'I didn't want this!', but the camera forces the viewer to challenge her. This woman has lived a life hidden from herself; she has spent 30 years being protected by Werner, who helped to raise her child. After a sheltered life dotted by drudgery and routine (she goes on aimless train trips to please her train-loving husband; she sings methodically in a church choir), we see Inge coming to the painful realization that she is finally emerging as a real person at the age of 66. She begins to understand, with tortuous internal conflict, what love really is.
There is a riveting scene in the film when the sublime Werner (Inge) stands by railroad tracks in cascading rain. With her back to the camera, she screams at the earth (or is it at herself?), then turns and walks towards us: we see then a face of boundless anguish, a face that has realized something for the first time: after all these years, it is, for her, a terrifying and devastating discovery.
There are flaws in this film (we know little about Karl or Werner, for example), but I still highly recommend it. This is a first in cinema, an adult film about REAL 'old people,' and we'll probably not see another like it for a long time to come. Finally, seniors in cinema have been given a genuine, authentic voice. It is a tribute to Germany, and perhaps Europe in general, that a film like this could be made. It's a work that would never (repeat, NEVER) be considered in the dumbed-down, juvenile, cartoonish world of Hollywood, which prefers to mass-produce movies that have little to do with the reality and pain of everyday human existence.