L'absent

A complex film with good performances all round, but Karoline Herfurth as Lilli (a young dance student) is quite outstanding, expressive in face and physical movements. My only criticism is her terrible diction. My German is good, but without the English subtitles I would have understood very little of what she said. The suicide of her brother left her with very mixed emotions: she loved him but at the same time was jealous of him because he was their parents' favourite. The parents, whose relationship with each other is also fraught, never ask her anything about how she feels. An elderly painter who has been asked to paint a double portrait of the siblings (her from life, him from photographs) is the only person who is interested in finding out what she felt about her brother - and that is initially only so that he can get some idea of how to portray them. She is rebellious, vulnerable, and looking for love (in the wrong quarters). The film is very long, (two and a quarter hours?), partly because there are a couple of sub-plots which might perhaps have been cut, and the ending is also rather drawn-out, with one mawkish false note (in my view) right at the end.

I am impressed after watching this movie - in Toronto - . It's a real " small" movie, though i saw it on a big screen in Ryerson Theater. I think it was even the world premiere. I was impressed through the play of the leading characters, and the theme was very interesting.

But I have one question: the name of the painter (so not the one in the screening, but the real one). The director mentioned his name in the Q&A, but I did not make a note. The paintings were beautiful made and i looked for the painter in Google, but could not find a name. Only some not cached entries that the Albert&Victoria Museum should have acquainted the paintings, nut because it was not cached i can establish this.

The Toronto Film Festival was seen by some as not containing very many home runs, especially after the litany of great movies from last year, from "No Country...", "Juno", "Michael Clayton" to "Into the Wild" and "Atonement". But I submit that this year was top-heavy in foreign Oscar potential, from "Waltz With Bashir" to "Gomorra" to this wonderful drama.

Caroline Link is a first-rate director all the way now with this follow-up to "Nowhere in Africa". You watch this movie and you're sucked in after about 10 minutes and you have the feeling that the director is totally in control and everything is running on all cylinders.

This is a family-drama based off the novel "Aftermath", written by a north-eastern American and set in New England I believe, but taken to Germany where it plays just as well because the themes are universal. Not entirely unlike "Ordinary People", the movie follows an upper-crust family that loses their teenage son in an apparent hunting accident. We spend much of the time with his older sister, a dance/theatre student, and a professional middle-aged painter who lives alone in a studio-flat as he's commissioned by the mother to paint a portrait of the two siblings as a remembrance. Lilli, the daughter, played by Karoline Herfurth (one of the unfortunate victims in "Perfume") thinks the whole idea of this painting is insane. She's wise beyond her years, tough and engaging, precocious, but tests her sexual prowess in ways that cause her more aggravation once she gets the attention which show her physical age.

Her performance and the way she relates to the painter are the key in this movie, and they find they are kindred spirits, both nursing personal wounds. The parents are mostly distant, but every one of their scenes reveal a depth of feelings and signals, especially from the mother, that the younger son was the glue that held the family together.

I loved this movie. I loved every single scene, and there wasn't a wasted moment. It doesn't ever strain for melodrama but sees it's characters from a level gaze, revealing wounds and themes of loneliness and shame that are very maturely handled by director Link. Kudos as well for a very good music score that serves the tone of this movie excellently.

Watch for this movie in the foreign film category come Oscar time.

IM WINTER EIN JAHR, is a film that tells the story of the deceased member of a family but since it's been a year they're struggling to recover. The mother and daughter has a estranged relationship until Lilli (Karoline Herfurth), dancer, who is trying to take her life one day at a time as her mother (Corrina Harfouch) commissions an artist painter (Josef Beirbichler) to paint a portrait of her demised son and her distraught daugther, whom she tells him that he was killed in a hunting accident until her daughter tells him it was a suicide. Apparently, the mother highly favors him over her daughter but has a difficult time communicating with her. So, instead Lilli is a tortured child who is in deep pain over the loss of her brother and Her Father (Hanns Zichler) struggles to keep the remaining Family together. This film echoes ORDINARY PEOPLE, done in a artistic way. The Family is in the dark and they're distancing themselves. But as for Lilli, she finds comfort in the lonely painter, who has lost a friend as well. This film directed by Caroline Link illustrates a grieving Family and it expresses through the painter's relationship with Lilli, whom he has grown attached to her. Good performances by all the cast and great cinematography. A slow absorbing Drama. My rating: 7.5

"A Year Ago In Winter" opens with a grieving mother commissioning a double portrait of her two children - a dance student daughter and a recently deceased son. She informs the artist that the son had died in a hunting accident - but he soon discovers it was a suicide, and also learns the daughter is hostile to the portrait project. The painter lives alone in his large studio - estranged from both his ex-wife and son, and dealing with grief of his own following the death of a close friend. The film focuses on how the relationship between the painter and the young ballerina develops from mutual antipathy, and gives them the motivation to confront the mystery of the brother's suicide.

It's rare to see the life and working methods of an artist portrayed so authentically, and even more unusual to observe quality artwork integrated so organically into a film. "A Year Ago in Winter" is a subtitled human drama so it's unlikely that it'll have much mass appeal outside Germany. This is unfortunate since the film's excellent performances, cinematography and screenplay depict an unusual and intriguing relationship. Even if it remains obscure, it's still a gem.