Ein fliehendes Pferd

I saw it last night in a SNEAK-preview in cinema and was very surprised.

Rainer Kaufmann made such an intelligent comedy of a married couple. Helmut is Teacher with depressed mind and living in a chewing gum routine. Sabine, his wife, is loves him, but is bored. During a holiday trip ( to the nice set of the "Bodensee"-lake in southern Germany ) where they traveled for the pas 12 YEARS (!! ) they meet Klaus - an old school friend of Helmut - and Helene his much younger girl friend. Klaus is completely the contrary to Helmut, vital and adventuresome. Against Helmut's mood and will Klaus and Helene brake into his calm and routinized world,and Sabine is happy about this pleasant change, seeing a chance to free Helmut and her marriage out of the lethargy, they are living in for years. Helmut is fending all their efforts to break his mental suit of armer. But in little moments you can see, how he is jealous of the life of Klaus, but he has no strength to break out.

The cast is fantastic, especially Ulrich Tukur's acting as a grown up small boy is wonderful. Also Katja Riemann acted superb, after she had bored the audience during the '90th with her comedies. Ulrich Noethen is the personified depression, and Petra Schmidt-Schaller a nice new-coming actress.

And the nice sets in the Bodensee-area next to German/Swiss border makes me think for a holiday there... but not for 12 years...

I was very surprised to see how well this movie is made and how much it touched my heart and soul, even if it is a comedy. In the US, stories like that are told by John Updike and the Woody Allen of the 1980s. Here in Germany we have Martin Walser who examines and dissects husbands and wives like angels and insects.

What begins as light summer days quickly turns into disaster but director Rainer Kaufmann never lets heaviness and depression creep into a vacation idyll that each of the four protagonists tries to maintain. Supported by four brilliant performances and the fluid, yet never obtrusive cinematography by Klaus Eichhammer, the director permits a view of a marriage in decline, withhelding the all important question: will they manage to overcome the obstacles? The script is complex, funny, exciting. I also would like to point out to a very unusual music score by Annette Focks. This is a film that manages to surprise us both from the dramaturgy as well as its direction. This is a true sophisticated comedy!