Das Fräulein

Fraulein (2006)

A remarkable, small, deeply felt, just slightly offbeat film about what must have been a common and terribly real and depressing reality. Several women from the former Yugoslavia are living in German speaking Switzerland, and the old ties, old animosities, and new ties and friendships, are poignant and delicately worked out.

Sometimes low budget films revel in their lack of polish, as if announcing they are rebellious. "Fraulein" is really not at all an underground film, but rather just a serious one working within some limitations of money and time. And they make the most of it on every level. Above all, the main actresses--the older woman running the little restaurant and the young woman with some undisclosed inner trauma--are searingly right on. The one is repressed and responsible and a bit lifeless, living to survive, and proud to be surviving. The other is a little wild and unpredictable, full of life but with a recklessness that seems unwarranted. At first.

Both women are sad and lonely, and that leads to their needing each other, though both are so stubbornly independent they have trouble coming together as friends. When they do, in small ways, the screen lights up and you keep thinking, yes, yes, at last. You understand how hard it is to find true companionship, and even when you do, it doesn't work out quite right. Still, they both offer cracks in each other's worlds, and we get sucked in for the joy of it, and the eventual disappointment.

A surprising film, very moving, and yet quietly so. Give it a chance to get under your skin. At first, watching just the older woman, you think this is some East Berlin throwback and it's just sad and slow. But it's all for a good end, and things complicate. And the two women, once you get to know them, will win you over.

Three women of three different generations, all of Balkan heritage, live their lives lost and homesick in Switezerland. Ruza is a Serb, Mila Croatian and Ana probably urban Bosnian Muslem. But this gentle, thoughtful movie doesn't go there. This is not about ethnic hatred and intolerance, and the bloody war in former Yugoslavia, at least not in any direct way. These three women and their plight bring closer the curse of immigration. The desire for better or safer life, deeply intertwined with loss of roots, belonging and even sense of self. Three women touch each other's lives, and continue their arduous journey called life. Director Andrea Staka doesn't use cheep, tawdry means. She just tells a story as it is. Mirjana Karanovic, Ljubica Jovic and Marija Skaricic, three marvelous actors perfectly cast in this gem of a movie.

Fraulein starts off strongly, as the viewer tries to figure out who the women are and what is going on. The problem is that after we figure it out, we're left grasping at empty air for something more. Are there any more great insights to be had about immigrant psyche or intergenerational female dynamics? Not really. The insights we do achieve are minor and predictable. Only one of the characters undergoes any significant change during the movie, and this change is also predictable.

The details of the movie are done well, the colours, the sounds, the camera angles. With strong details but weak theme, this movie ends up feeling myopic, a feeling only underscored by the many close-up shots and the rarity of wide-angle, panoramic shots. There's a distinct lack of context - this story about immigrants, young and old, could take place anywhere. I didn't even know this was a Swiss film until I started reading other reviews.

Some movies feel intimate when they concentrate on the immediate details, as this movie does. However, the emotional remoteness of all the characters prevents any intimacy from developing, and instead all that's left is myopia.

This many times awarded Swiss movie was produced by "Dschoint Ventr", an innovative Swiss film organization that is eager to distribute Swiss movies world wide. Fact is that Swiss movies are almost unknown in the US. In Switzerland, even many filmmakers are convinced that the topics are mostly too Swiss-specific and that great Swiss actors do not exist. So far for the present. For the past, Switzerland's greatest filmmaker, Kurt Früh (1915-79) is nowadays highly criticized for the alleged lack of disclosing the miserable social situation in the 50ies and 60ies and for having strongly used Italian Neo-Realist movies in order to make his own films. I assure you: both is not true. But nevertheless, not a single one of many hundreds of Swiss movies made between the silent time and den 70ies are available on international DVDs.

Social topics have a long tradition in Swiss film. I just remember Kurt Früh's "Bäckerei Zürrer" where the conflicts between the early Italian immigrants and the indigenous population in Zürich are focused, or later especially in the movies of Kurt Gloor (1942-1998), f.ex. "Die Plötzliche Einsamkeit Des Konrad Steiner". Not to forget the movies of Alain Tanner, although his movies are all in French and thus form a minority in the rest of Switzerland. Also the present movie deals with immigrants, has a strong social vein, but unlike Früh's and Gloor's movie, you hardly hear Swiss German spoken. The three main actresses - famous artists imported from Ex-Yugoslawia as if there would not be enough talented Yugoslawian women familiar with the jobs shown in the movie - speak broken High German. From the rest of the cast only the two men - Andrea Zogg and the Spaniard Pablo Aguilar - are to be mentioned: Zogg is to see about four or five times for possibly 10 minutes, Aguilar for totally perhaps 2 minutes, and the rest of the crew for fragments of seconds. So, an interaction between the Yugoslawian immigrants and the Swiss population is out of the question and the movie is showing nothing else than how the three women get along, partly speaking Serbian/Croatian and partly broken German. In this movie, there is no trace of the wit, the humor, the tears-causing miseries and the whole empathy of Kurt Früh's movies, but nothing either of the socialist problems brought up in Kurt Gloor's films. This movie was produced in Switzerland, that is all. It could play anywhere in Europe, there is nothing Swiss-specific in this movie, except perhaps the five seconds when your hear Zurich's "Radio 24".

Let me tell you one thing: As long as Kurt Früh's and Kurt Gloor's movies are not subtitled, engraved in international DVDs and available around the world, such mediocre and questionable films like "Das Fräulein" have no right to go around the world.

I saw this film in Thessaloniki,Greece film festival in November 2006 and I was simply amused by all the matters that occurred in it! But I wouldn't like to talk about the plot...

Right the previous day I had seen Grbavica, a film by Jasmila Zbanic- a young director from Bosnia Herzegovina , starring Mirjana Karanovic, the most known actress around the Balkan countries (except maybe for Greece). Grbavica was plain, interesting but totally in control and simply a nice film with a spicy subject matter. Most enjoyable of all,Mirjana Karanovic! I was happy enough to see all her charm, if u can call it that way, in a fresh film by an upcoming director but when I saw Das Fräulein, then I finally realized the depths of her acting...

Sorry for making such an intro but this film is about her and if you get to realize what she is standing for , everything makes a lot more sense. Of course she is not the main dish and that's also an exciting thing!

Director Andrea Staka made a film to talk about what these people carry with them, what they are made of. We don't really know... We don't... It's not about characters in a film, not about a plot, it's about the actors,the director,the people of Bosnia,Yugoslavia,Serbia.. Political backgrounds, immigration, war,personal past all mixed up with youth, health and life perspective...

... all packed up in a simple, honest way... That's what it is about!