The most significant fact about "Die Erfindung der Liebe" ("The Invention of Love") is probably nothing about the plot or the characters of the film, but about the tragic background when making this movie. Lead actress Maria Kwiatkowsky, only in her mid 20s, died during its shooting from a supposedly heroin overdose. As a result of this, the film was very much delayed. Still it's more of a surprise that it actually was finished made it to theaters. A heavy reworking of the script was necessary, but finally Randl and her co-writer Philipp Pfeiffer found a way.
The theme of the original film was about a couple who wanted to trick a dying woman in order to inherit her fortune. The victim, however, is not stupid and manages to get the man to really fall in love with her. When Kwiatkowsky died, the writers decided to include a behind-the-scenes feature with the former characters actually being actors and dealing with the circumstances of her co-actor's demise. Still they're acting obviously. I won't go much deeper into detail, but let me say that they certainly made the most of the difficult situation and came up with pretty much the best thing one could hope for given the circumstances. Sunnyi Melles was especially convincing, although she probably had the showiest character too. Most of the writing was really smart and there were only 2-3 scenes that left me unimpressed and that I could have done without. The drowning attempt in the pool would be one of these, which went against the clever subtlety this film showed for roughly 100 minutes. Recommended.
The theme of the original film was about a couple who wanted to trick a dying woman in order to inherit her fortune. The victim, however, is not stupid and manages to get the man to really fall in love with her. When Kwiatkowsky died, the writers decided to include a behind-the-scenes feature with the former characters actually being actors and dealing with the circumstances of her co-actor's demise. Still they're acting obviously. I won't go much deeper into detail, but let me say that they certainly made the most of the difficult situation and came up with pretty much the best thing one could hope for given the circumstances. Sunnyi Melles was especially convincing, although she probably had the showiest character too. Most of the writing was really smart and there were only 2-3 scenes that left me unimpressed and that I could have done without. The drowning attempt in the pool would be one of these, which went against the clever subtlety this film showed for roughly 100 minutes. Recommended.
