Horst in Translation ([email protected])
"Das Wochenende" or "The Weekend" is a German 100-minute movie from 3 years ago written and directed by the fairly experienced Nina Grosse. She adapted Bernhard Schlink's novel for the screen here and you may have heard that name before as he is already the one who wrote "The Reader", the movie that brought Kate Winslet her Oscar win. But back to this one here. There are no international superstars in here this time, but a fairly solid cast of German actors who are known to everybody with an interest in German movies. Koch, Groth, Riemann, Moretti and Auer have been active in the industry for a long time. Experience shows and they deliver in here as well. Especially Riemann, who I am usually not too big a fan of, plays a somewhat different character than she usually does, also in terms of looks.Who I have not mentioned so far are Robert Gwisdek and Elisa Schlott, the 2 younger actors and both are really good. Gwisdek received a German Film award nomination and deservedly so. He lost the award to his father actually, but in my opinion the dad is not as talented as his son and plays almost the same characters in everything he is in. Robert channels his inner Kinski for this film here and is a joy to watch. Definitely a scene stealer. Schlott proves that she does not only look stunning and actually fairly similar to Scarlett Johansson, but also that she has genuine acting talent. Her career has not been in bloom in the last 3 years the way I hoped it would be, but I will have my fingers crossed things will be getting more positive for her again, also on the big screen."Das Wochenende" is not really a convincing movie in terms of political intrigue as you may guess from the description. For me, it worked more of a family drama with the characters' left wing backgrounds only being background action in the truest sense of the word. And the last 15 minutes were fairly uninteresting. Maybe they should have ended the film earlier, around the 85-minute mark, because when Gwisdek is out of the picture (and Schlott), the film just moves slowly towards the end without offering anything really. But that is my only criticism pretty much. One of the best German films from 2012 and I recommend it.
