Writer/director/producer Ingrid Veninger's 'I am a good person/I am a bad person' is a very engaging film - from the first moments on screen -ironic because the lead character - Ruby, a mother and indie filmmaker - in that opening intimate scene is completely disengaged. She is so dissociated from her own feelings and from life and this simple opening act reflects this. This deep disconnect runs through the family, both in her marriage and also with her teenage son and her teenage daughter. When Ruby takes her daughter Sarah to Berlin to be her assistant for the opening of her film at a very small film festival(and that is worth watching), things slowly take a turn for the worse. Sarah is harbouring a secret of her own and there is very little real communication between mother and daughter. Both are emotionally lost in their own inner worlds and both are in a major yet unspoken transition in their lives. Both need to change. There is no easy fix. This cannot be done together. Sarah, frustrated, abandons Ruby and flies to Paris in order to comes to terms with herself away from her 'oversharing' mother. Ruby is left to wander Berlin on her own, sadly promoting her very obscure small film and meeting very interesting characters. Writer/director Veninger manages to keep the tension and ennui of both characters building to a perfect simple ending. The cinematography is also very good. The film was shot in Europe and has at times a very melancholic feel to it. The minor chords, the silences, the offbeat humour, where what is not shared is sometimes more important that what is shared or revealed. This is an intelligent film that speaks to deep, unspoken longing - to be seen, to feel love. A film which is not afraid to hold the tension of the seemingly opposite good person/bad person in all of us.
