"I
can only think one day ahead, other-wise I'd go
crazy," noted director Rudolf Thome during the second
week of a four-week shoot in the summer of 1999.
Fortunately,
the sexagenarian, who is represented in the Competition
for the first time (he is a five-time Forum participant),
did not go nuts. Instead, he has made a film that
critic Norbert Grob has designated "the first important
German film of the new millennium."
A
composer (Hanns Zischler) celebrates his 60th birthday
with the seven most important women in his life
and a party kicks off that has its hellish moments.
Hellish, because that's how people are: wrathful
and wild. But they're also wonderful.
Thome's
film is full of unflinching lyricism. A man speaks
to a tree, and a nun dances to rock 'n' roll.
Love forms a motif throughout the Berlin director's
30-year career, notably in the trilogy Forms
Of Love, made between 1987 and 1989.
Silke
Schütze
by
Rudolf
Thome