COLOGNE, Germany -- The German Film academy handed veteran director Doris Dorrie the equivalent of a golden bouquet Friday, nominating her latest drama Cherry Blossoms for six Lolas, the German equivalent of the Oscar.
Close behind were Fatih Akin's cross-cultural drama The Edge of Heaven with five Lola nominations and Christian Petzold's cerebral mystery thriller Yella with four.
Dorrie's film -- a sweetly tragic story of a terminally ill widower who travels to Japan to fulfill a lifelong dream of his dead wife -- picked up Lola noms in most of the main categories, including best film, best director and best actor for star Elmar Wepper.
Wepper has to be considered a front runner for the best actor Lola but he will be going up against two local veterans: Matthias Brandt for his role as an abused husband in Jan Bonny's Counterparts and Ulrich Noethen for his comic turn as a husband stuck in a midlife crisis in Rainer Kaufmann's crossover hit Runaway Horse.
Nina Hoss picked up a Lola nomination for her starring turn in Yella, a role for which she won the best actress Silver Bear at the Berlin Film Festival last year. Also nominated are Dutch actress Carice van Houten for Paul Verhoeven's World War II thriller Black Book (a German-Dutch co-production) and Victoria Trauttmansdorff as a husband-beating wife in Counterparts.
Cherry Blossoms has been getting rave reviews from German and international critics since its debut at the 2008 Berlin Film Festival. Many consider it the best film in Dorrie's long career.
The 52-year-old director made her name with light comedies including "Men" (1985) and The Fisher and His Wife (2005). While her films were often boxoffice hits, they were usually snubbed come awards time. Dorrie has only one Lola -- or German Film Award -- to her credit: a best screenplay prize in 1985 for her script to Men.
But this year her movie is the one to beat in what is a surprisingly diverse field.
Close behind were Fatih Akin's cross-cultural drama The Edge of Heaven with five Lola nominations and Christian Petzold's cerebral mystery thriller Yella with four.
Dorrie's film -- a sweetly tragic story of a terminally ill widower who travels to Japan to fulfill a lifelong dream of his dead wife -- picked up Lola noms in most of the main categories, including best film, best director and best actor for star Elmar Wepper.
Wepper has to be considered a front runner for the best actor Lola but he will be going up against two local veterans: Matthias Brandt for his role as an abused husband in Jan Bonny's Counterparts and Ulrich Noethen for his comic turn as a husband stuck in a midlife crisis in Rainer Kaufmann's crossover hit Runaway Horse.
Nina Hoss picked up a Lola nomination for her starring turn in Yella, a role for which she won the best actress Silver Bear at the Berlin Film Festival last year. Also nominated are Dutch actress Carice van Houten for Paul Verhoeven's World War II thriller Black Book (a German-Dutch co-production) and Victoria Trauttmansdorff as a husband-beating wife in Counterparts.
Cherry Blossoms has been getting rave reviews from German and international critics since its debut at the 2008 Berlin Film Festival. Many consider it the best film in Dorrie's long career.
The 52-year-old director made her name with light comedies including "Men" (1985) and The Fisher and His Wife (2005). While her films were often boxoffice hits, they were usually snubbed come awards time. Dorrie has only one Lola -- or German Film Award -- to her credit: a best screenplay prize in 1985 for her script to Men.
But this year her movie is the one to beat in what is a surprisingly diverse field.
- 3/28/2008
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
- Ask me what the 1,800 voting members of the European Film Academy will choose as their top film of the year and I'd confidently say: the Romanian pic that won over Cannes. Ask me what the same jury will choose as the top film from a first time filmmaker and I could say it will be a film about a musical band. That is because out of the four choices, I'm guessing that Eran Kolirin's The Band's Visit and Anton Corbijn's Control have about an equal chances on this award. The other two noms are Gegenüber (Counterparts) by Jan Bonny from Germany and A Man’s Fear of God by Özer Kiziltan. The four debut films nominated for European Discovery of 2007 were determined by a committee comprised of Fipresci (the International Federation of Film Critics) members Jacob Neiiendam (Denmark), Marco Lombardi (Italy) and Dana Linssen (the Netherlands), and
- 9/27/2007
- IONCINEMA.com
Munich Filmfest
MUNICH -- In Counterparts, the feature debut of young Cologne director Jan Bonny that recently screened at the Munich Filmfest, the film's strengths and weaknesses are deeply entangled. While the acting is good -- especially when it needs to be, during chillingly matter-of-fact scenes of domestic violence -- there is practically zero character development. The main problem is that Counterparts completely fails to create a sense of suspense, which will most likely condemn it to a short art house run in German-speaking territories and brief festival exposure.
There are other good points that somehow also end up as problems. The Dogma-style cinematic discipline -- no musical scoring, no makeup, environmental lighting, all hand-held camera work by cinematographer Bernhard Keller -- creates a depressingly truthful sense of how everyday and common this family tragedy can be. Yet many crucial moments are played with the main actor's back to the camera, so it is almost impossible to identify with what the characters are going through.
The trouble starts with the script, which Bonny co-wrote with Christina Ebelt. While it's not difficult to accept Bonny's twist on the domestic violence problem -- and it's not giving away much to reveal that it is the wife who is beating the husband -- the background of her frustration and his emotional helplessness is too pat and easy.
The wife, grade school teacher Anne (Victoria Trauttmannsdorff), has a domineering, hypercritical father (Jochen Striebeck), and her police officer husband Georg (Matthias Brandt) needs to please everyone. These two points are elaborated again and again when one or at most two mentions would have sufficed.
So a ranking policeman is being physically abused on a regular basis by a schoolteacher, but there's no wondering about how it's all going to end because Bonny makes it clear early on that it never will. Not all films have to result in a happy ending for the main character, but there at least has to be a struggle for triumph to engage the audience's emotions even if victory remains forever out of reach.
Given the rich psychological and explosive plot possibilities of the basic situation Bonny has given us, Counterparts steadfastly refuses to make the most of itself.
COUNTERPARTS
A Heimatfilm production in association with WDR/Cologne and Film Foundation
Credits:
Director: Jan Bonny
Screenwriters: Jon Bonny, Chrstina Ebelt
Producer: Bettina Brokemper
Director of photography: Bernhard Keller
Music: Sonoton
Costume designer: Frauke Firl
Editor: Stefan Stabenow
Cast:
Anne: Victoria Trauttmannsdorff
Georg: Matthias Brandt
Michael: Wotan Wilke Moering
Denise: Susanne Bormann
Hans Josef: Jochen Striebeck
Running time -- 100 minutes
No MPAA rating...
MUNICH -- In Counterparts, the feature debut of young Cologne director Jan Bonny that recently screened at the Munich Filmfest, the film's strengths and weaknesses are deeply entangled. While the acting is good -- especially when it needs to be, during chillingly matter-of-fact scenes of domestic violence -- there is practically zero character development. The main problem is that Counterparts completely fails to create a sense of suspense, which will most likely condemn it to a short art house run in German-speaking territories and brief festival exposure.
There are other good points that somehow also end up as problems. The Dogma-style cinematic discipline -- no musical scoring, no makeup, environmental lighting, all hand-held camera work by cinematographer Bernhard Keller -- creates a depressingly truthful sense of how everyday and common this family tragedy can be. Yet many crucial moments are played with the main actor's back to the camera, so it is almost impossible to identify with what the characters are going through.
The trouble starts with the script, which Bonny co-wrote with Christina Ebelt. While it's not difficult to accept Bonny's twist on the domestic violence problem -- and it's not giving away much to reveal that it is the wife who is beating the husband -- the background of her frustration and his emotional helplessness is too pat and easy.
The wife, grade school teacher Anne (Victoria Trauttmannsdorff), has a domineering, hypercritical father (Jochen Striebeck), and her police officer husband Georg (Matthias Brandt) needs to please everyone. These two points are elaborated again and again when one or at most two mentions would have sufficed.
So a ranking policeman is being physically abused on a regular basis by a schoolteacher, but there's no wondering about how it's all going to end because Bonny makes it clear early on that it never will. Not all films have to result in a happy ending for the main character, but there at least has to be a struggle for triumph to engage the audience's emotions even if victory remains forever out of reach.
Given the rich psychological and explosive plot possibilities of the basic situation Bonny has given us, Counterparts steadfastly refuses to make the most of itself.
COUNTERPARTS
A Heimatfilm production in association with WDR/Cologne and Film Foundation
Credits:
Director: Jan Bonny
Screenwriters: Jon Bonny, Chrstina Ebelt
Producer: Bettina Brokemper
Director of photography: Bernhard Keller
Music: Sonoton
Costume designer: Frauke Firl
Editor: Stefan Stabenow
Cast:
Anne: Victoria Trauttmannsdorff
Georg: Matthias Brandt
Michael: Wotan Wilke Moering
Denise: Susanne Bormann
Hans Josef: Jochen Striebeck
Running time -- 100 minutes
No MPAA rating...
- 7/24/2007
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
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