I saw this excellent film at a cool location, a volunteer-run open air cinema in the grounds of a small circus near Winterthur. It was the middle of winter, it was raining, and there was no roof! But the organisers had made fires, mulled wine, cauldrons of goulash with rosemary bread… One volunteer scraped the benches clean of water, another came round with cushions filled with heated cherry stones. So, for people near Winterthur: the Schöntalkino has brief runs at the Circus Pipistrello in summer as well as winter. Check it out!
While trying to light a cigarette in her living room, the elderly Rosie suffers a minor heart attack. She wants her independence, but her health is failing, and her two children assemble to work out what to do.
Her son Lorenz, the famous “gay writer” now living in Berlin, appreciates his mum’s biting one-liners and unrepentant hedonism, but doesn’t much appreciate spending too long out in rural East Switzerland. Leaving his book tours and empty darkroom adventures to care for her is the last thing he wants. Unfortunately, his sister has her own family problems – besides, keeping her mother’s boozing in check is burning her out. Resentment at their mother’s handling of their deceased father doesn’t help the siblings bond.
The film primarily follows Lorenz as he renegotiates his place in the family. To do that he’ll need to get closer to his mum, and make himself vulnerable to secrets he might not want to hear. In the meantime, an adoring young fan from the village, Mario, is hanging around dewy-eyed at the homecoming of his favourite author. Might he provide temporary relief for Lorenz? Or will there be consequences?
My co-viewer and I thoroughly enjoyed this movie for its sharp dialogue tinted with biting humour, and a startlingly convincing performance by Sibylle Brunner in the lead role. I’d call this a truly Swiss movie in that much of the pleasure comes from the pain in what is unsaid out of fear and common decency.
Rosie herself, because of booze or just her pig-headedness, cuts through it all with relish, making withering put-downs of her sullen son-in-law or calmly whipping away attempts to patronize her into a retirement home. You get the feeling it can’t have been easy for her, growing up the Swiss German country with a mouth like that – or maybe the bitterness came later, from a hidden place of pain.
More than anything, the film impresses with its unpredictability: key secrets and events unfold organically instead of inevitably. It’s an unusual movie in that multiple theme and story strands are all contained but never overwhelm: the mother-son relationship, the shadow of a departed patriarch, an ethically dubious love affair, the trials of siblings in middle age, alcoholism, losing independence with age, being gay in a conservative town. They are all subordinate to the presentation of well-written scenes between complex characters.
It’s a pleasure to see such good writing so close to home, and I’m eager to dip into the back catalogue of writer-director Marcel Gisler and his co-writer Rudolf Nadler.
Swissness Difficulty Level: Chasseral (easy).
Language: Swiss German.
Availability: PlaySuisse… And it looks like it might be on Prime Video in English under the terrible title “A Man, His Lover and His Mother”.
Swiss Me Deadly 