Zwei Mütter

The German film Zwei Mütter was shown in the United States as Two Mothers (2013). It was written and directed by Anne Zohra Berrached.

The movie stars Karina Plachetka as Isabella Bürgelin and Sabine Wolf as Katja Maria Maisch. Isabella and Katia are a loving lesbian couple who want to conceive a baby. Artificial insemination is a standard practice in Germany, but not for same-sex couples.

The pair meet numerous obstacles--both legal and financial--in the Catch-22 world of German medical politics. They also meet some potential sperm donors, who all say they are motivated by altruism. However, altruism is obviously pretty far down the list for most of these men.

Not being able to conceive a child is a problem in itself. But it's also a dividing force that acts to separate the two women. For example, they were seemingly happy with one partner being the main provider, and the other just doing casual work. However, that becomes an issue when financial stability enters the picture. The film has an interesting, albeit somewhat unsettling, ending, when several of these strands come together.

Zwei Mütter is a movie worth finding and viewing. We saw it at the Little Theatre as part of Image Out, the Rochester LGBT Film Festival. It will work very well on the small screen.

Being gay or lesbian is still not something that is widely ... helpful or popular. So when two lesbian lovers, want to become parents, the process to become or get the opportunity to get one of them pregnant is staggering and near impossible to achieve. There are scenes in this, that while scripted I reckon, bare a lot of resemblence to real life - and I would not be surprised if they have been taken from real life incidents.

But to be mad at a worker, who may be aware or not that what he does, doesn't make much sense, is not helpful. It is the system that is stacked up against the two women. There is a lot of things that can be said here and you hopefully root for them. Even when they are down and mad at each other (like any relationship this has its ups and downs), there is one goal that unites them ... will they be able to overcome all the obstacles? But more important or rather more intriguing to watch, are all the hurdles that are put in their way ... I doubt the system will change just because of one movie ... but there is always hope that this will add to the discussion and help society reach a better place overall.

This film feels stereotypical. Yet, it differs from the rest.

To try to explain: In it's way of portraying lesbians it feels a bit flat and non progressive. One is a butch, the other's not, they have hot lesbian sex but are apart from that pretty cold people. But the style of the film, the editing and general scenography differs from the previous ''lesbian movies'' I've watched. While others tend to be long drawn out borderline tedious this one is straight on the other side of the chart. It feels very shortly cut which gives it almost a documentary feel to it and I think this deprives it of some depth it desperately needed hence the non saying characters.

In another way, the documentary feel works in favour of the main focus of the movie, which is indeed very real. It helps the viewer feel how unjust the system works and how it tears relationships that lesbian couples has to go through this in order to have child.

Even though a lot of things could've been improved I do think this movie is worth the watch because it touches such an important issue. It builds itself up at the same time as it's tearing itself apart.

6/10