Everyone Else

The thinking is too obvious. Get a couple of well built people to talk for two hours, with some (uninspiring) nudity thrown in and no one has to find too much money to produce something that looks like a movie. There are so many film festivals, one of them is bound to play it.

Fraulein Minichmayr is lively enough and she's been in some real films (Downfall, Perfume)so her first scene with the little girl holds hope - "Tell me why you think I'm so awful." Co star Eidinger as an architect offers a chance for some comment on taste and style which fail to impress.

Production values are in the competent unimpressive bracket.

It was the end of the Sydney Film Festival but this was not the movie to offer an audience which had just been blackjacked with the ridiculous Ming-liang Tsai VISAGE. Have they no mercy? Even film festival subscribers deserve pity.

Ade has that rare gift (taken to it's peak by filmmakers like Eric Rohmer and more recently Nicole Holofcener) of showing all the things movies usually don't. The little things, the subtle moments in a relationship that make up 98% of the time in real life, that lead to that dramatic 2% we usually watch on screen.

The story is about a couple in their early 30s, and not far into their relationship, taking a vacation and in the process slowly discovering each other in relation to each other and the world. Indeed the only brief moments the film feels false are when the biggest drama erupts. But for the vast majority of the time, thanks to wonderful performances by the two leads and Ade's seemingly casual, but very specific use of the camera, it feels like we are seeing the subtle, complex, confusing truth of a relationship, warts and all, in a way that's very rare on screen.

A very realistic tale about two people living on different frequencies and the shame and misunderstanding about and with the people you intend to be the nearest with. Told in front of a beautiful setting by breathtakingly great but unagitated and subtle actors. One of the must-see German films.

great actors, smart dialogs and a very precise observations of a young professional society in Germany. one of the best German films in a long time made by a director who knows how to direct great actors. people who like theatre will love this movie. when i went to this movie i expected a German version of a french movie from directors like francois ozon. i also expected it to be a typical movie made from a woman for women. still i expected a lot because the actors count to the best ones of German theatre. the movie did not turn out the way i expected it. the questions it raises about creative achievers who want to stay independent, free and young are shameless and razor sharp. every scene is observed very precisely without seeming to be constructed. gitty (birgit minichmayr) might not be as strong as many might hope but she never looses the main focus of this movie: authenticity

Maren Ade has set a German "Kammerspiel" in sunny Sardinia; a Dogma-looking, Eric Rohmer-inspired account of a young couple on vacation in a big, beautiful house - and their reluctant, but increasingly blatant attempts at penetrating each other's bodies and souls. She loves him. Does he love her?

"Alle Anderen" is not pitch-perfect (and has been received with varied reactions - from a posh Jury Grand Prix in Berlin '09 to fairly feeble reviews). Indeed, it's a bit too long for its own good and strangely uneven at times. But at one point, you just surrender to the subtle narrative and the complex, fully fleshed out characters (needless to say, Birgit Minichmayr and Lars Eidinger are phenomenal in the leads. Their performances look so simple, so easy-to-pull-off).

Maren Ade has accomplished the difficult stunt of putting the audience in the very same room, at the same intense wave-length, as these searching, anxious people. She allows us to eavesdrop to cunning conversations, to witness a constant (if not always visible) emotional struggle. And she keeps a shrewd surprise for the very end, suddenly pulling the rug from under our feet, forcing us to re-evaluate everything we've seen and heard up until this point.

The sound of silence can be damaging. Tears and laughter can be emancipating. Because in the end, it's all about love.